River Of Life (Book 3) (11 page)

The trees became increasingly bare, void of leaves and needles,
stunted and dry.  There was very little grass, everything was brown, the sky
pale.  The world looked and felt sick.  The trees thinned until they no longer
existed.  Valleys still fell and hills rose, but all was brown except patches
of black where the world looked as if it had been burned by fire.  The days
grew uncomfortably hot, the wind died.  The only noticeable living creatures
were the vultures flying overhead, marking the wizard’s presence.  The big
carrion knew everything that entered the prairie desert did not leave alive. 
They patiently awaited the death of the one below.

Erelon’s food began to run short, and though he rationed it,
slowly it dwindled until there was nothing left.  Water was also scarce, and in
every low point that looked as if a stream might have once passed, Erelon dug
deep into the earth, hoping that some liquid might bubble up from the soil. 
The wizard began to live off bugs.  Then as they even began to disappear, he
shot down one of the vultures with a bolt of electricity from the sky.  The
bird's meat tasted foul, of the death and decay that the bird fed upon.  Soon
even the vultures became wary, and to shoot one down became increasingly hard. 
Erelon’s shoulders began to thin, and his stomach seemed to swallow itself.  He
did not remember this trip taking this much time when he had fled from Mortaz,
following the mountain's contour to Suragenna.  But then, he had spent much of
that trip buried in dark morbid thoughts.

Slowly the mountain fell back, and before Erelon lay the valley,
in the corner of which lay his old home, Mortaz.  Not yet visible, it would not
be long before it emerged from the ground, looking stately and imposing as it
reclined against the wall of the mountain.

The wizard turned his horse towards it while he wondered how he
would feel looking upon it again.  It had been home to himself and his enemies,
the place where he had lost one of the greatest battles of his life, where he
had lost his pride.  Here he had been humbled, and he suffered some of the
greatest sorrow of his life while friends were torn apart beside him.  Already
his stomach churned in apprehensive waiting.

Finally its form appeared from the mountain’s face.  The stones
were bleached white like a skeleton upon a desert floor from the sun’s eternal,
fiery personality.  Erelon shook his head, this was not his home.  This was not
the same keep that he had escaped, he told himself several times, but as he
drew closer, Erelon could see watchtowers from where he had observed visitors,
and the walls on which he had fought.  The snow cap, though, was gone, along
with proud banners, an inflow of visitors, and the voices of many races.  No
animals charged across the valley, hiding within the trees at the mountain’s
base.

Erelon watched the great walls draw closer until they towered
over him.  He marked spots on the trail where he remembered the simple things
that had happened.  By one rock, he had helped a wagoner whose wheel had split;
in another place, he had met the queen of some southern country and had been
rewarded with a kiss on the cheek.

Erelon followed the trail that had been blazed through the grass
as it led him into the gate.   The wizard assumed the path had been caused by
those that fled from the forest, fleeing him.  Erelon looked up at the wall as
it towered high above.  Long ago it had been since he had tried to protect it. 
Chunks of stone were missing.  In some places it had been repaired.  In others,
the wall was disintegrating, and the dirt it had held back spewed forward. 
Those now inhabiting it gave little time or energy towards its upkeep.  The
gates so long ago torn down and displaced, were still gone.

Erelon directed his horse through the first gate, under the
wall.  It loped up the slope, never hesitating as if worried; it trusted the
man who rode it.  Erelon rode in like a returning conqueror, straight in the
saddle with pride in his posture.  He strutted into Mortaz as if a huge army
rode behind him.

Across the open, flat, dead ground, Erelon traveled, the sun
beating down upon him, each ray seemingly directed towards him.  Ruins where
several villages had at one time sat were now all that was left to remind the
wizard of simpler times.

The next wall was set far away, so small from where Erelon rode
that it seemed as if he could jump his horse over it.  The white wall rose
before the wizard as if it were a giant picking itself up after a long nap.

Another opening presented itself in the next wall, leading once
again upwards.  A gentle incline led below the wall and up to another flat
stretch of land once covered in grass, grazing cattle, and fields of grain. 
Now it was no more than an area dried hard.  Long it would be before it would
again produce.  Intense irrigation and plowing would have to be engaged for
several years before it would again be fit to produce for the needs of people.

A vision flashed before his face, Messoth, being pulled apart by
the dragbas.  They picked him apart, pulling his flesh from inside his armor,
and then the explosion of magic, destroying the enemy that was eating the
wizard alive.

Erelon could observe nothing living except a few vultures
hanging high overhead, not even the wraith’s army.  He proceeded through
several more levels.  Each time his view of the outside world gained greater
depth as he looked down and out through the valley’s mouth and into the plains.

Finally he reached the last wall after over a couple hours of
walking the horse.  He had not remembered the path being that long, yet his
body told him otherwise.  He had been exposed to the sun’s blast, and now his
body was dried out like leather, his head pounded, his mouth hung open gasping
at the air filled with dust.

The wizard simply looked at the gate that would finally lead to
the castle, or actually, the opening where the gate at one time would have
stood.  Once he entered, almost anything could happen.  Here all foresight was
gone.  He had learned some patience over his life, and now he utilized it.

Regaining his breath while swallowing some of his lessening
water supply, the wizard watched the opening, careful to note within his mind
any movement.  Yet the only animated element was the dust stirred by the low
breeze.  The wall rose too high for the wizard to observe anything important
over its summit, and the small gate also did not allow for the hunter to
observe anything of consequence.  There was only one option left for him, walk
inside.  Yet, he still procrastinated, sitting on his horse sniffing at the
air.

Once inside, there could be an army waiting for him, hiding, and
he would never know.  In his mind, the wizard tried to remember the terrain
while at the same moment knowing it would do him little good.  When he left, it
was covered in gardens, and in two decades of inhabiting the Keep, the goblins
could have rearranged the landscape to however they chose.

Yet what most caused the wizard to hesitate was the knowledge
that he did not know what seeing the old Keep would do to his failing mental
stability.  Finally, he steadied his nerves and stepped through on foot,
leading Draos.  Before him, Erelon saw in his mind lush green gardens, but
slowly they gave way to reality, brown dust.  Soldiers that he had fought
beside again lined up in the rain as they made one last stand of defense
against the enemy.  The last rain that this ground had probably seen.

As phantoms, the soldiers passed, the darkening clouds faded,
the rain was gone.  All that was left were worn paths, which had led through
the gardens and were still visible like blood vessels running close to the
skin’s surface.  In the distance, a giant castle, a mansion, grew from the
ground.  The Keep itself, and above the Keep, faces of goblin warriors carved
into the mountain wall.

The wizard dropped the reins of his horse within the shadow of a
tower and started walking, following the trails, though there were no gardens
to obstruct the path.  Erelon followed one main avenue, one by which horses and
wagons could be drawn to a circle before the Keep’s main entrance.

The trail’s width changed as it flowed along.  It would become
narrow and then widen again.  It dipped and climbed.  Yet as Erelon did not
wish to enter by the main entrance, he turned onto a side path, a more narrow
trail meant for walking, a path used to meander through the gardens.

A peaceful trail for those who wished to meditate in nature,
slowly it brought him towards the castle.  Yet before the wizard reached the
Keep, he stopped.  A short flight of steps were before him, flanked on both
sides by statues of winged lions sitting on pedestals of small square chunks of
rock.  Erelon did not remember these statues.

Carefully the wizard looked them over.  He felt no threat, yet
why would the wraiths have statues constructed?  Did they still have a desire
for art, a desire for some sense of beauty and construction, not just for
destruction?

Slowly he passed between them, up the flight of stairs.  The
Keep appeared before him.  Vacant windows stared at him like the eye sockets of
a skull.  They longed to again harbor beings that encouraged life, instead of
the half dead that knew only how to destroy and end life.

Hunched over, Erelon approached the castle, trying to hide below
the rises of the landscape, though it was mostly flat.  Always a hand close to
a knife, his eyes darted for any sign of the army that was under the control of
the warlocks.  This was where their power would be the greatest, in the
presence of the main essence of their bodies.  His ears never caught a sound,
nothing but a slight breeze that swept the world with hot air and displaced the
dust.

The wizard licked his dried, cracked lips and sat still for a
moment.  This was not right.  The warlocks controlled a horde, and although
many were employed elsewhere, Erelon knew he had tracked those that had
encamped outside the gates to the wizard’s retreat back into this valley.

Looking around, there was no sign that a large mob had entered. 
Gathering his feet below him, Erelon lurched forward, running for a side door. 
Quickly he was on the pillared porch, and in a moment, he was in the cool,
close, side hallway within the Keep.  He had tapped a simple off colored rock. 
A section of wall slid away revealing a passage that a pair of gnomes could
have comfortably passed through but forced the wizard to crawl on his belly
like a lizard.

The door silently closed behind the wizard who never noticed
that his escape was cut off.  Instead, all of his senses were focused forward
into the future and on the path before him.  Part of Erelon was still amazed
that he had not heard the gnashing of goblin teeth on his heels as he had raced
across the open landscape.

The rough stonewalls passed by, and Erelon’s hand reached out to
feel the old stone, now hot from the weather it had suffered for two decades. 
The path abruptly stopped, adjoining a main hallway that was also completely
empty.  The wizard’s eyes had adjusted to the dim light, gathering the little
there was and causing a dark image to appear.  Yet it still left the wizard
uncomfortable.  He had used the darkness and knew its possibilities for ambush
and destroying adversaries.  The enemy before him was not ignorant; they were
not weak; and Erelon trusted nothing.

These are my halls, Erelon thought to himself as he stood up.

With his arms at his side, hands held palm up, even with his
shoulders, Erelon called out, “Speak to me home of the wizards.  My home.”

Phantoms of torches appeared down the length of the hall,
wavering as their thin forms tried to once again go dormant and disappear into
the world from which Erelon called them.  Their light was not great, yet it
allowed for the wizard to view what lay ahead.  They danced with the presence
of the wizard.  Long it had been since the magic of the stone structure had
felt the presence of one as great as Erelon.

Erelon easily passed through the halls.  Although almost two
decades, he still remembered them all as if the building’s design had been
burned into his mind with a hot iron.

One hall led to his study, another to what had been a treasury,
yet out into a garden he stepped.  Now brown, wooden skeletons were all that
was left of small trees and shrubbery.  A stone bench where he had met a young
girl floated back into his memory.  He could remember meeting her regularly for
two weeks, and then suddenly she never again appeared.  For another week he had
continued to visit the garden hoping for her return.

After that, Erelon assumed there would be no woman in his life. 
He was a wizard with a power so great it left him isolated.  His magic would
not allow for him to put down foundations for a life.  Afterwards he had gone
back to his books, experimentation with magic, and practice with blades.

The garden was small.  A door was reached within seconds,
allowing Erelon to escape the terrible sun.  The wizard did not know where he
was going.  He did not really even know what he looked for.  Though, deep
within his soul, he hoped for a confrontation with the warlocks.

Yet he could feel no dark shadow upon his mind or heart.  There
was no evil, no presence that he could feel in the Keep beyond his own.  It was
almost as if it had been abandoned.  Slower he began to move; more cautious he
became as he was disturbed by the Keep’s apparent abandonment.

Erelon paused by a room that had collapsed and filled with
rubble.  Thoughts trailed through his mind about what the room had been.  These
he quickly shut from his mind, but they continued to come back, resurfacing in
new ways.  In that room, he had destroyed the men who had used him, betrayed
him.  In destroying those wizards, Erelon had killed some of his most powerful
fighters, his greatest weapons and assistance.