Blackhand (7 page)

If all went as planned, soon Quintel would go to a secret place and bond with the god, allowing the deity to enter his body, to see through his eyes, touch with his hands, live through his breath. Siyer moved a piece, noting that the outcome of the bonding was uncertain. Nothing of such design had been attempted before. Quintel could die.

Such unknowns did not trouble him, Quintel answered. He had been raised to despise Sirian Ru. An opportunity to accept such power made his blood rush with excitement. He would not shirk from the task.  He would answer Yuul’s call.

Siyer explained that his ingrained philosophy was the reason Quintel had been selected. Only an Abanshi soul could counterbalance the negative aspects the god would experience once incarnated.

For a month they played the game in this frenzied manner, using both hands to move their pieces, taking turns winning depending on who initiated the conversation. After hundreds of games Quintel began noticing other strange side effects of play. The game did more than open supernatural channels of communication-- it changed the currents of his thoughts and gave him new ways to see the entire world. It changed the way his mind worked.

An intense awareness of his surroundings crept into his daily life. His physical senses had become acute. With a degree of concentration, he could hear the scraping tread of an ant crawling across the window ledge, or smell the light of day warm the stones of his cell. In a crude fashion, he even sensed the other occupants of the fortress milling about, fulfilling their daily lives. They were globs of life moving beyond the walls and under the floors. Maintaining such levels of awareness left him exhausted, yet he was compelled to attain them.

He told Siyer of these strange perceptions.

“They are only one of the many effects of the game,” Siyer explained. “There are others, but you cannot feel them. They occur in the realm of your spirit.”

“Are these effects harmful?” Quintel asked.

Siyer considered the question.

“For millennia, men have sought higher perceptions and greater awareness of their world,” he began. “Some have pursued this goal through study and meditation, others chose drugs and artificial methods. What you have is what they sought. It is not damaging, yet you will never be as you were before.”

“But I have followed none of those paths,” Quintel said.

Siyer nodded.

“The game is a shortcut,” he explained. “It bridges the route to enlightenment and heightens awareness of the physical world. But the results are fleeting.”

“How fleeting?” Quintel asked, fearful of losing his newfound abilities.

“It depends on the individual,” Siyer said. “But any powers you possess will be gone within a year, unless the god intervenes.”

Disappointment washed over Quintel's features. His heightened senses made the world pulse with color and music.

“I can tell by your reaction it is time to move our lessons to another level,” Siyer said. “Get the game and set up the pieces.”

Quintel brought out the wooden pieces. With the practice of a thousand games he arranged them on the board. When finished, he boldly made his first move.

Siyer did not lift a digit to respond.

After a moment, Quintel looked up.

“What?” he asked, but Siyer did not answer.

Quintel sat up and crossed his arms, contemplating the meaning of Siyer's refusal to move. Siyer was trying to tell him something. This was the lesson.

After several more seconds, Quintel shook his head.

“I do not understand.”

Siyer sighed with mock impatience.

“Play the game without the pieces.”

“How?”

Siyer offered a stern look. “Just try.”

Quintel closed his eyes and tried to visualize the board. He had played in his mind before, but this was different. After a few minutes he realized he was doing nothing but imagining possible games in his head, there was no bridge to Siyer.

“Don't just picture yourself moving the pieces,” Siyer advised. “Rather, seek to attain the feeling you hold when the channels are open. Move beyond your senses. The pieces are only blocks of wood. They do not command you. They cannot restrain you.”

In the way a few drops of rain precede a deluge, Quintel began to absorb the world around him without depending upon the game.

At first it was very difficult without the assistance of the pieces to guide his thoughts. But as he relaxed into the effort, he sensed, on the horizon of his perceptions, Siyer's presence growing clear. As he remembered the sensations of entering the experience, progress became easier.

Although his eyes were closed, he saw Siyer sitting across from him and sensed the tides of his mind. He could hear the stone walls hum and the air against his skin felt alive. He captured Siyer’s thoughts like butterflies, but was too enchanted to respond with his own. The experience was different without the game; less restricted, but also less coherent. Lacking a boundary, his awareness floated freely, hearing Siyer's message, but not comprehending him against the landscape of a thousand other color-spangled ideas. After several minutes of drifting, he felt Siyer become impatient.

Then the Vaerian tore through the gentle chaos with a shout of focused thought.

“Listen! This is the final step of your training; you must remain focused. You must control your impulse to roam.”

Once contact was made, Quintel understood. He pushed out the clumps of mental debris bumping about the room and reeled in the narrow strand of communication cast by Siyer. With the connection complete, a strong, steady pulse found the rhythm of his heart and he settled into discourse with his mentor.

“Inside this sphere of awareness, you control all the things that are you,” Siyer said without words. “Hunger, thirst, pain, fatigue cannot burden you. You must still eat, breathe and drink to stay alive, but now you control the quantity of each element your body requires. A corner of bread could keep you alive for weeks. A cup of water will sustain you much longer than a man. You are the master of your own limits.”

As Siyer relayed that concept, Quintel became aware of his own organic being. He sensed the currents of his mind changing. His body was a vehicle; his spirit, an observing passenger. He felt the weight of his muscles, bones and blood. He felt the burning fire of Life inspire his heartbeat and fill his lungs with breath. His body seethed with organic determination. Where the sterile boundaries of his invisible soul ended, the water, stone, fire and wind of his physical body writhed in filthy celebration of its own existence.

“I see myself,” Quintel said aloud. “I see what I am.”

Siyer withdrew his link with Quintel. The cell, once crowded with thought, sound and color, returned to its previous condition. Quintel's revelation passed to memory.

“That is all I have to teach you,” Siyer said.

Chapter 9

Quintel was gathering herbs with Siyer outside the fortress wall when he saw the charging rider coming up the road.

A watchman on the wall also saw the horseman and called down to the gatekeeper. With a grinding moan, the heavy gate parted to let him enter.

The rider dismounted and spoke a single sentence to the guards.

“Huk returns in three days.”

Quintel looked at Siyer, but the old man pretended not to hear the news and continued pulling plants from the ground and knocking dirt from their roots.

Since Quintel had deciphered the conundrum of the game, he held a new view of the world. He could control his hunger and amplify his endurance at will. He could detect the approach of people before they entered the boundaries of his senses.

Attaining freedom had ceased to worry him. He knew it was only a matter of time before they escaped.  With Huk returning, he suspected that time was short.

Four guards and a lieutenant rode to the edge of the forest to summon Siyer. The officer told him that Huk was ill and would require aid immediately upon his arrival.

Siyer offered to meet Huk with the drugs half way, but they refused, saying the warlord had commanded against it.

“That is not good,” Siyer told Quintel as they walked back to the fortress. “He hides something.”

“A weapon?” Quintel asked.

Siyer nodded.“That is my guess. I believe the god has provided Huk with new technologies to battle our people. We must find out what they are.”

They had been prepared for the warlord's return for many weeks. Doses of the drug had been mixed and stored in adequate, but not self-threatening, quantities.

“At least we know he is ill,” Quintel said after they had returned to their cell. “Our deception has lasted.”

“True,” Siyer said. “But it also means he is running out of the substance, otherwise his health would be good. Meeting him halfway would have eased my anxiety.”

On schedule, Huk returned to the fortress at the end of the week. His caravan of wagons and soldiers waited behind a low hill in the forest, concealing their ranks while Huk's ornate coach entered the gate. He arrived in the middle of the night. Siyer and Quintel were at the entrance, waiting to meet him.

“I am starting to feel better, Vaerian,” Huk said as Siyer filled a small flask with the herbal potion. “I was beginning to think that it was your medicine making me ill.”

“No, your apparent improvement in health is a very bad sign,” Siyer countered. “It precedes the final stages of the disease. We must saturate your body with the herbs.”

Although something that might have been suspicion flickered in Huk's eyes, he took the flask from Siyer. His traveling supply had run out three weeks ago, and he missed his medications.

Siyer dared not question the warlord about his meeting with the god. It was obvious Huk was hiding something. Quintel did not need special powers to figure that out.Quintel discerned some facts just from the energies of Huk's presence. He sensed anticipation – excitement -- in the warlord's spirit. Caution was there, and something else.

Fear?

“I brought you and the Abanshi a small gift back from my journey,” Huk said draining the flask with one swallow.

“Oh?” Siyer said.

“A dozen Abanshi assassins attacked our encampment two weeks ago,” Huk said. “We captured four of them.”

Siyer refused to give Huk a reaction. The warlord was baiting him. He wanted Siyer to know something.

“These you won't be able to save.”

Huk dismissed them. Siyer and Quintel returned to their cell. The news of his captured countrymen swayed Quintel, but not as it would have months ago.  He knew he could not help them.

“He will kill them and there is nothing we can do,” Quintel said.

“Yes, but I am concerned why Huk went out his way to tell us about them,” Siyer said. “He has something planned he wants witnessed.”

Later, after the rest of the caravan had arrived, the four Abanshi were locked in the lowest level of the fortress, but they were not tortured. Instead, attendants bandaged their wounds and fed them generous portions of tolerable food. Clean clothes replaced their tattered clothing.

Quintel and Siyer were not allowed to see them. After Huk returned, they were locked in their cell and forbidden to speak to anyone, including the guards. For days, Huk sent a maid for his elixir.

At last, they were escorted to Huk's chamber. The corridors of the fortress seemed strangely empty.

“In five nights, we will hold a celebration in honor of my return,” Huk explained to them. “You and your apprentice will serve the wine throughout the evening. I would hate to waste this opportunity to display all my trophies.”

For the rest of the week, generals and landowners under Huk's rule arrived and encamped around the fortress walls. Colorful banners and tents of blue, violet and red, blossomed in the open brown fields and green forest surrounding the fortress. Representatives from a hundred villages clambered about the courtyards and castle halls clad in dress armor and dazzling robes. The once solemn corridors swam in the patterns and flags of people from all over the Forestlands.

All of them came to learn what the god had told Huk.

Chapter 10

The banquet was held in the columned room where Quintel first met the warlord. A great table stacked high with beef, fowl and other foods repeated the circular shape of the room. Guests lined the outside of the table leaving the center open for entertainment. Grand tapestries embroidered with the respective colors of each sect hung from the columns and ceilings. A cluster of musicians blew pipes, plucked harps and hammered drums. Great fireplaces roared, providing ample light and heat. Huk's throne sat empty. The warlord was nowhere in sight.

Siyer and Quintel, bound in gold shackles, served wine and bread to the hostile guests, who took several opportunities to douse them with insults and spittle. As the night grew older and the wine drained, the taunting increased in frequency and intensity.

“Fill my cup to the brim, Abanshi excrement, or I'll cut off your head and piss down the stump,” barked Underlord Taln, of the northern district. Taln’s reputation was well known. He had fought the Abanshi in three campaigns and trailed thirty battles behind his name. He hated every child born from Western stock and would have killed all of them himself given the chance. Quintel drew much of his attention throughout the evening.