The Immortal Mystic (Book 5) Page 23

  “I was not expecting you,” the mystic said bluntly.

  “He is my friend, and one of my truest companions,” Erik put in before Jaleal could say anything.

  The mystic pursed his lips and his eyebrows went up momentarily before the mystic shrugged and pointed to the space near them. “Please, make yourselves comfortable.” As the words finished, a great white couch appeared in the space he had pointed to.

  Erik and Jaleal moved to sit and watched as the mystic conjured forth a high-backed chair for himself opposite the couch. A moment later a small table appeared between them all, filled with bread and fruit.

  “Eat if you like,” the mystic said.

  Jaleal leaned forward and took a peach from the table, but Erik didn’t move. Instead he watched the mystic as the man tore a loaf of bread in half and then broke it down into smaller pieces before eating as well. After a moment the mystic noticed Erik’s stare and set his bread down. He finished chewing and then conjured a goblet. What was inside it, there was no way for Erik to know, but the mystic drank deeply from it and then leaned back in his chair and gazed back at Erik.

  “I sense there is urgency in you,” he said pointedly. “Ask me your questions, and I will give you the answers you seek.”

  Could it be that simple? After all he had gone through was this really to be a history lesson with a bearded sage in a grand tower? Erik had many questions, each swirling through his mind simultaneously. The one that finally emerged from his lips was not the one he expected it would be in the many times he had envisioned his meeting with the Immortal Mystic.

  “Why did you abandon the Middle Kingdom?” he asked.

  The mystic’s eyes narrowed on Erik and he took a deep breath in. Jaleal nearly choked on his bite and he set the fruit down.

  “Erik, what are you doing?” Jaleal asked as he nudged Erik in the side.

  Erik brushed Jaleal off. “All this time I imagined that you were blind, like the priests at Valtuu Temple, or that you were so old you couldn’t leave the confines of your magical shrine that somehow kept you alive. Yet, here you are, hiding in a library while food and drink come to you at will and you have a pair of Sahale guards to keep you comfortable. How can you sit here and justify yourself? Why didn’t you come to find me?”

  The mystic leaned forward. He looked from Erik to Jaleal and then back to Erik. “This is a conversation for us to have in private.” He snapped his fingers and Jaleal disappeared.

  Erik jumped off the couch and went for his sword instinctively. “Where is he?”

  The sword was next to disappear.

  Erik looked to his hands and patted his body as if to find the blade resting with him again.

  “Perhaps you are not ready,” the mystic said. “Your emotions run too hot in your blood. Perhaps we can talk again next year.”

  Erik’s heart skipped and anger rose up in him. “No,” he said flatly. “I came for answers, and I will have them.”

  The mystic rose to his feet. “You threaten me?”

  Erik shook his head. “It isn’t a threat. It is a promise. Kick me out of your tower if you like, but I will bang on the door until I break your whole tower down if I have to. I want to know why you are hiding here.”

  “I AM NOT HIDING!” the mystic shouted. His voice was so forceful that actual thunder shook the inside of the chamber and Erik fell back to his seat on the couch. The mystic smoothed out his robe and took in a breath to compose himself. He blinked, holding his eyes closed as he exhaled and then he opened his eyes. He narrowed the icy blue orbs on Erik. “I have no power beyond my village,” he said in a harsh, yet quieter tone. “Nagar’s Secret has damaged me too much. If I were to cross back into the Middle Kingdom, I would lose my soul. Even now, I fight with the taint that festers inside.”

  Erik let the words sink in for a moment. What did he mean by ‘cross back,’ had the mystic been there before?

  “I was there,” the mystic went on. “I fought the dark magic that poisons our plane. I am not hiding, I am here holding the darkness at bay. I am gathering the magic to fight it again, but I will need a champion to do the fighting for me this time.”

  Erik shook his head. “There are no mentions of you fighting against Nagar and Tu’luh,” he said.

  The mystic scoffed. “You are daft,” he said. “Who do you think I am?”

  Erik shrugged. “No one told me your name, not even Tatev. They only call you the Immortal Mystic.”

  “Bollocks!” the mystic threw his hands up in the air and mumbled something to himself. “Fools, the lot of you!” he chided. “Maybe you aren’t him. He wouldn’t be so dense and slow.”

  It was then that Erik noticed something, or thought he did anyway, behind the mystic’s ear. “Who are you?” he asked as he tried to crane around to get a better look.

  The mystic turned back to him, cutting off Erik’s line of sight. “I am he who devised the magic that counters Nagar’s. I am Allun Rha.”

  Erik’s mouth went open and he shook his head. “Tatev was right,” Erik said. “You did survive.”

  “Of course I survived,” Allun Rha said. “Whoever said I didn’t?”

  Erik’s brows shot up and he shook his head. “A lot of the annals say you died in the battle of Hamath Valley.”

  “Bah!” Allun Rha dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand. “Nonsense.”

  Erik then scrunched his brow and leaned forward into his waiting hands and sighed. “Tatev had a theory that you went east to look for the Immortal Mystic. Did you find him?”

  Allun Rha sniggered and dropped down into his chair again. “The Mystics died off a long time ago,” he said. “I survived this long only thanks to the dragon blood that runs so deep in my veins. Even still, I had to construct the crystal you saw in the chamber below to keep Nagar’s poison from devouring my soul.”

  “So, there is no Immortal Mystic?” Erik pressed.

  “Why is this of such importance to you?” Allun Rha shot back. “I already told you that I have the magic you need to defeat Nagar’s Secret. Is that not enough?”

  Erik leaned back onto the couch and sighed. “It’s a long story. Would it mean anything to you if I said I had found the Infinium?”

  Allun Rha arched an eyebrow and folded his arms. “I know of it, any wizard worth his salt knows of it, but what does that have to do with Nagar’s magic?”

  Erik sighed again and dropped his head over the back of the couch. His hopes for finding the answers seemed crushed. If Allun Rha didn’t even know the connection, then how was he to have any idea how to defeat the four fireballs Erik had seen?

  “Or is it a danger beyond the present one that has you so worried?”

  Erik picked his head up and looked back at Allun Rha. A sly smirk appeared under the man’s beard and soon it turned into a full-fledged smile.

  “So you do know about them?” Allun Rha asked.

  Erik cocked his head to the side, trying to make sense of the circles their conversation was going in. “Are we thinking of the same thing?” Erik asked.

  “Four fireballs falling from the sky, otherwise referred to as the horsemen, am I right?” Allun Rha said with that wry smile still on his face.

  Erik nodded. “Tu’luh showed me a vision of the future, and claimed that without Nagar’s Secret, we were doomed.”

  Allun Rha nodded. “He showed me the same thing before Hamath Valley. He was trying to get me to side with him.”

  Erik leaned forward now, very intrigued by the conversation. “That is what he wanted from me.”

  “Good, then you have already passed the first test,” Allun Rha said. “I am sorry for testing you like that, but I wanted to see which version of the champion you were most like.”

  “Which version?” Erik repeated with a puzzled look on his face.

  Allun Rha nodded. “I have spent years, centuries, studying the books of prophecy left to us by the mystics. I actually met one of them on my quest to find their temple. He gave me all t
he knowledge he could, and helped me understand the prophecies. However, they are not easy, nor are they to be trifled with lightly. There are many false prophecies and mistakes. Eventually, I narrowed down the right ones, but even then there was a problem. There were three prophecies about the champion coming to meet me. In each of them, the champion came seeking the power to destroy Nagar’s Secret, but every scenario was slightly different. In one version the champion came to me with Nagar’s Secret in hand. We were able to vanquish the magic, but it caused a terrible catastrophe.” Allun Rha paused then and took in a deep breath. Erik noticed that the man’s hands were shaking. Allun Rha wrung out his fingers and steadied his nerves before continuing. “I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say that I was relieved that you did not bring the book here.”

  “Which version talked of this meeting?” Erik pressed, eager to get to the answer.

  Allun Rha shook his head. “None,” he said matter-of-factly. “In the second the champion came along with a red haired man wearing a special pair of glasses known as the Eyes of Dower. In the third, the champion came late. In that prophecy, the champion was unable to find me until after spending years in the eastern wilds. By that time, the champion had learned how to transform into the dragon form, and only then could locate my tower. However, in that prophecy it was already too late to save the Middle Kingdom. Tu’luh had used Nagar’s Secret to enslave the whole of the kingdom.” Allun Rha paused again and sighed deeply. “A great war was fought in that one. Very few survived. Those who did were only free from the magic long enough to become enslaved by an army of orcs that rose from the south.”

  “Tu’luh is dead,” Erik put in quickly. “Perhaps that is why the prophecies are different.”

  Allun Rha looked at Erik and shook his head. “No, each of the books talk of killing Tu’luh twice. You have killed him once, but he will rise again.”

  The words slammed into Erik like a club to the head. “What?” he asked desperately.

  Allun Rha held up a finger. “The thing to focus on here is not Tu’luh. It is that you came with an unforeseen companion, and that you don’t quite match any of the versions I had expected. Something you did along the way has altered the course of events that were going to unfold. That is a very dangerous thing indeed.”

  “Tatev was killed by Tarthuns,” Erik said. “He is the red haired man you know of.” Erik then realized that Tatev’s glasses had not been collected in the items given back to him in the Tarthun camp. They, along with the Infinium, were now lost somewhere in the wilds. “The Eyes of Dowr are lost,” Erik said. He wasn’t as sad about the glasses as he was about how he knew Tatev would feel if such an artifact had been forgotten. His eyes teared up as he thought about the librarian. “Tatev would have loved your tower,” Erik put in.

  Allun Rha stood up and moved to put a hand on Erik’s shoulder. “I don’t know what happened to change the course of fate, but I do know that I can help you stop Nagar’s Secret.” Allun Rha bent down and lifted Erik’s chin so that their eyes met. “I can also help you avoid the calamity of the four fireballs. You see, in the version where the champion came late, the champion had knowledge about the horsemen as you do now. In that prophecy, the champion had spent time studying the Infinium, and had been shown the vision by Tu’luh. The champion was able to use the magic that I have created to avert the fireballs from ever coming.”

  “Isn’t that the prophecy with the great war where only a few people survived?” Erik asked.

  Allun Rha nodded. “Yes, but now we have an advantage. You have the same knowledge, and we have several years of time to work with. The champion did not have that in the prophecy.”

  “What happened in the second prophecy, the one where I came on time with Tatev?”

  Allun Rha sighed. “You seem intent on calling yourself the champion,” Allun Rha said pointedly. “I have not determined that you are, in fact, the champion spoken of in the prophecies.”

  “Who else could it be?” Erik asked. “I killed Tu’luh, I have fought to keep Nagar’s Secret hidden, and I have journeyed to find your tower. What more must I do?”

  Allun Rha wrinkled his nose and smoothed a hand over his long beard. “Quite,” he said cryptically. “Very well then. Let’s assume, for the moment, that it is you. In the second version of the prophecy the Keeper of Secrets slew Tu’luh without you, but his soul was twisted irreversibly. He then helped a great necromancer revive Tu’luh and offered his own body to be fused with Tu’luh’s soul. You were able to use my magic to defeat him in the end, but everyone you know died in the final fight, including you and me. Worse than that, Nagar’s Secret was stolen by one that is known in the books of prophecy only as Aparen, and the future of the Middle Kingdom was anything but certain.”

  Allun Rha paused and looked pointedly at Erik for a moment. “Does the name Aparen mean anything to you?” His cold eyes pierced into Erik’s, as if trying to reach out and search into the boy’s very soul.

  Erik squirmed under the uncomfortable stare, but he shook his head. He had not heard the name before that he could recall. The wizard arched an eyebrow but didn’t press the issue.

  “Each of those versions sounds horrible,” Erik said. “If that was all you had to look forward to, then why not send someone to look for me and find me sooner?”

  Allun Rha smiled. “That is exactly what Lepkin, and all of the Keepers before him, were doing.”

  “But you knew it was me right? I mean, the prophecies described who I was so you knew who to look for didn’t you?”

  “No,” Allun Rha said. “As I said a moment ago I am still uncertain that it is you. In fact, there is no description of the champion other than that it is written to describe a young person who has the blood of a dragon. So, while naturally that meant I was looking for a Sahale, I had little else to go on. I can see you are a Sahale, and you have come here to present yourself as the Champion of Truth, so you will be treated with the full consideration each candidate is to be given. While you stood at the edge of my village I used my powers to search your soul in a way much like you use your power to discern between truth and evil in others.”

  “You have the gift?” Erik asked.

  “I use what is common among Sahale, but it is slightly different than the power you trained in.”

  “So if there is no description, and you still are not convinced that I am the Champion of Truth, could it be that perhaps I am not any of the boys described in the prophecies?”

  Allun Rha nodded. “The books of prophecy are extremely vexing. But, let us not concern ourselves with them. You are here. You have the gift, and you have already done enough to prove that you are the champion foretold in prophecy. You slew Tu’luh, as you said. You also have uncovered the danger beyond Nagar’s blight, which is the four horsemen. More than these, you have a good soul about you, even if you are a bit hot-headed. You are not the one I expected, but you are the champion, and by the gods if you aren’t we have no time to find another candidate who will be as ready as you are now.”

  Erik wasn’t sure how to take what Allun Rha was saying. It felt backhanded and yet, Erik couldn’t deny that the man was right.

  Allun Rha snapped his fingers and the blue circular stone floated over to them. He reached out and touched it. Immediately beneath the first appeared a second stone that slowly separated away toward Erik. “You step on that one, I will use this one,” Allun Rha instructed. The two stones descended to the floor. Erik stood and stepped onto his while Allun Rha got ready upon his own stone. The two of them shot upward at an alarming rate, yet Erik did not feel off balance in the least. His hair waved in the wind created by the hurried ascent, but the stone felt as stable as the floor he had just been on. They rose up beyond the chandelier, until they hovered only a foot or so away from the ceiling. Allun Rha pointed around them and Erik saw narrow windows that allowed them to see out from the tower.

  “This village has been completely shielded from Nagar’s Secret,” Allun Rha
said. “I have perfected the power I used at Hamath Valley, and now I have devised a way to protect all of the Middle Kingdom. Moreover, it will protect us from the fireballs known as the four horsemen.”

  “How?” Erik asked.

  “To understand that, you must know that the horsemen come when a people are beyond saving. There is something out there, beyond this world, that is so powerful that it can destroy worlds. That is what happened to the Ancients. Their world of Kendualdern was destroyed in a terrible war, the likes of which would make even your darkest nightmares piss themselves with fear.” The bearded man turned to Erik and held a finger in the air. “But there is hope.”

  Allun Rha looked up and the ceiling parted over them. The stones flew up and out from the tower. The two of them soared around the village and hovered down to about street level as they wove between the workers in the field.

  None of them stopped their work, or even looked up to acknowledge them.

  “Can’t they see us?” Erik asked.

  “Not this time,” Allun Rha said. “Just as my tower was shrouded in a veil when you arrived, so are we now. They can neither hear nor see us. Look at them, and tell me what you see.”

  “I see farmers,” Erik replied quickly.

  “Not with your eyes, boy. Look with your gift.”

  Erik summoned his powers up and looked at the man nearest him. The man was bending over, aggressively hacking at a section of clay to break up the soil. His hands were dirty, as were his simple clothes. The man stood after a few whacks and then leaned upon the handle of his tool as he surveyed his work. That is when Erik sent his power out. He searched the man’s very soul, and found it to be absolutely pure.

  “There is no evil in him,” Erik said astonished. He sent his power out again, but saw the same results. He then turned his attention to a woman not far away. Her energy was as pure as the man’s. In fact, no matter how many people he studied, they all appeared to lack any mal intent whatsoever. Erik had never seen anything like it. Even Lepkin and Marlin, as good as they were, could not compare to the people of this village. “What is this?” Erik asked.