Summary: Khalid has a Harper's adventure before the events of the game, and unknowing meets a future enemy.
Fanfiction.net
--
The undead were fewer in the streets. People mourned; soldiers cleared away the dead. Khalid and Flores and the boy passed through the way to the gold-tiled palace of the ruler of Durpar. The boy no longer looked like a noble's child, robes torn and dirty and the amulet of the Waal-Baqi once more concealed in his clothing. A crush of citizens prayed together in an open courtyard, the health of the failing King mixed with pleas against the horror that had come to their city of late.
"We're going to find the servants' entrance," Flores said stoutly. "Always some way to sneak in, especially in chaos like this, and we'll rendezvous with Subhash if'n we can." Khalid envied her confidence, then realised that she must put it on for the sake of the child with them. There were hanging gardens heavy with thick ferns and flowing fountains; Durpar's rich fruit and plentiful gold shining about. Around those giving prayer; into groups dashing back and forth as if they were part of them; slowly creeping past gates and upon protected grounds. Young boys and girls raced with messages; maidservants bore pots of wellwater upon their heads; guards stepped through the gardens and watched over the tumult.
"There are so many people. So much noise," the boy said. "There are other children. I only saw other children from the balcony and the seeing-glass and in books, before. Then there were the ones who hit me and kicked me and yelled. I don't like this. Where's Mother?"
"Keep on b-being brave," Khalid said. "For you have already done much."
"I can bear it. What if I used the stone to make the fountains come alive, the lion head and the leopard head and the elephant mount with flaming mouth of Indra Sakka?" the boy said. "It could--even bring back the dead who are not gone yet, or piece the ashes in air and fire together like black thread, it's the kind of magic in all the threads I can see the best--"
"You n-need not," Khalid said firmly. "Be calm. Come with us." Once more he took up the child in his arms.
Jaheira, yes, I w-wanted-- But never at the c-cost of you, my love-- We might have been so v-very happy. Honey-brown curls rested trusting against his left cheek.
Prisons were set below the palace itself. Beyond bars in the lower cells, prisoners gained but small fragments of the sky from low windows that peeked by half a foot out of the ground. Khalid and Flores stepped past such cells and heard Subhash's cry.
The mage had stood himself up, gripping the bars and earnestly watching the movement of people through the grounds though he was pale and unrecovered. Bending down Khalid could see that Sharadaa lay on a pallet behind him; they were not bound within the cell, and two pallets and a bowl of water and bread lay out as furnishings. Flores had said that Pravarsena would not have the Harpers ill treated, for their past support of him; and Jayadevii would grant Subhash his full rights as a noble by strict law. "So you live! That is good," Subhash said. "They say that the masses of undead have abated--but that leaves them free to lay blame where they would."
"Subhash, we have located the item," Khalid said softly. Those words shocked Sharadaa into stirring and caused Subhash's eyes to pop open.
"Then you must--! Prince Pravarsena must be found. Go quickly. They must not see you here."
"Fool," Flores said. "Fool all of us."
Khalid withdrew; tried to look only the servant; Flores turned away with him from the cell.
But it was too late for the guards in saffron head coverings not to find them. Arrows threatened them and Khalid had no choice. They were taken to a hall within the palace itself, and a woman dressed richly in a formal light yellow saree, heavy rings on her fingers and gold on her veil. Her face was tattooed with the marks of the Durparan gods, the harsh long lines of her features similar to pictures Khalid had seen of the King; she was in late middle age, her hair greying below her saffron veil, and her earrings were marked with the signs of the royal house.
"Princess," Flores said, and dropped to one knee. It did not spare them.
"My seer," Jayadevii said in high Skrtavak, and whispered in the ear of a mage next to her. He gave a nod and pointed toward them--and toward the child. She looked back at them. "They are two foreigners, and they have attempted to steal an object that is mine by right. Now they bring it here. Have the child gift the Everlasting to me."
"It is...it is the p-property of only the King," Khalid repeated stubbornly, his teeth chattering in his mouth. "It is for...for your lord father only to judge."
She is said to be hide-bound traditionalist; too far bound. Pray to Mielikki and all other Harper gods that she is so bound.
"I do not debate law with farangi." There was a disturbance behind; the Princess turned in annoyance at a racing messenger. He spoke to her in a whispered interruption.
His Highness, Khalid caught; then Pravarsena... Jayadevii conferred once more with her advisors. The boy’s hand tugged at his sleeve, and Khalid bent down to listen to him. "They say Prince Pravasena, the youngest, is gone," he whispered. "He is gone and they hold him for ransom. She. Shyressa."
Khalid stood awkwardly as soldiers and princess set eyes on them.
"Cloak them all and take them, secured," Jayadevii snapped. She pointed out five of her soldiers. "Go to the point named. The pisacha may have these in place of royal blood."
Khalid started to plead, but Flores' voice rang out louder alongside his: "Kid's no farangi. Leave him here. His mum's some--"
"Bind their mouths," Jayadevii ordered, stone-faced and cragged as a rock lizard. "It is best the Waal-Baqi be borne by another for this. I will repay the family of the boy if he is truly of pure blood. There is no time to waste."
No--I spoke of this to him, Khalid thought, panic growing on him. If we are captured the Waal-Baqi can protect you; use it to wreak enough destruction, stay in the palace and call for your mother to help you-- He tried to give a signal as the soldiers took him by the arms and forced a thick leather bridle past his lips.
"I can't," the boy said. "I can't because they'd hurt you and the little woman. They're bad and I hope someone tries to take the Everlasting, I hope they reach out and try to grab it and then it will--" They silenced him the same way; Khalid despaired.
I have failed.
They were marched through streets Khalid could not tell, hoods covering most of their faces, dragged perhaps too quickly for questions to be long-standing. The outskirts of the city, Khalid understood, and then they came to the dry gardens of a dusty old mansion. A shoulder-height fence punctuated by spiked palisades confined yellowed grass, as if this place had seen nothing living for decades. It saw nothing living now.
Pravarsena kidnapped here. We would...have to rescue him in any case. But not like this. Khalid watched Flores, who stared coldly before them. He felt the child lean against his leg. He shared a glance with the boy; saw green eyes widen all at once in grave fear, and tried to shape himself into a shield for him. From the other side a second group of cloaked figures approached, one bearing a wrapped spear.
"We see no sentries, Highness," a soldier said. "Nor observer."
Jayadevii raised her head below her dark hood, closely flanked by her honour guard as a score-and-five of soldiers. "Go in. Bring the prisoners first."
A step forward, prodded in the back by a short club, and Khalid saw--and smelled--it all. They had walked into a fog-filled courtyard in only a step, white-blue mists blanking near everything else from sight, unnatural. The surrounding street might as well no longer have existed, the house itself but a far shadow ahead. Behind was the source of the smell. The spikes of the shoulder-height wall were no longer bare. Blood had dripped and dried along them, and on each rested a severed head facing outwards. The back of each was a pointed helmet of a Durparan soldier. The stench was so overwhelming that it could be nothing but real.
Mage-sight gave one a gift to see past illusions in advance, or a curse.
Then slowly and soundlessly the heads of the dead men turned inward. Bulging dead eyes on greying faces swivelled to stare at them, and dead mouths gaped silently open as if they wished to scream a warning. Dark blood ran afresh down the palings.
"It is not the magic of the vetala that works this," spoke Jayadevii's mage, and Khalid looked down.
"So it is not, Highness," spoke a high cold voice. Shyressa stalked past the fog. "You come in person to spare knowledge that your youngest brother was a fool. This is a greater coup than I could wish for."
"He will never now rule for fear that you have enchanted him," Jayadevii said, "but in the last days of my father it would be unfilial to deprive him of his child." She held out a hand, and a female bodyguard by her side placed the wrapped spear in it. Cloth fell from it, and Khalid saw a vel coloured a rich brassed gold: the spear a man's height with flame-shaped blade atop it, this one all cast from the same metal. "The stone you crave is not the only birthright of our line."
Then divine-like flame lanced down from the heavens. The mist was split in two in its power, dark red, erupting over the eyes like an earthquake over the vampire's head. Khalid had to close his eyes, lifting hands behind his back above the child's--
A man screamed, and the image of Shyressa in the mists was replaced by a middle-aged human on his hands and knees dressed in yellow and white, accompanied by a tall human woman who wore honey-coloured hair in an escaping plait above her neck. Khalid saw the vampire no more--and behind the heads still gaped their silent scream, and under his feet in place of dead grass black smooth stones appeared between shapeless grey ground. Even beyond the gate they had come there was nothing left.
"Lalla!" Jayadevii demanded, striding forward. "What treachery be--the undead witch--"
Even as she strode, the bare shadows that remained about the gate they had come blinked into nothingness. Khalid could not see even shadows--only an indescribable grey that hurt his eyes to search into it. Mist masked this place. Beyond the dead men on the palisades nothing was left. It was another world--
Khalid had heard of such things in magery before. He indicated begging to the guards that they should free their prisoners, for all of them were in strong danger. They paid him no heed.
"Sister. I saw you as her for an instant," the man said, raising himself painfully to his knees. "It sorely tempted me to use certain of my own portion of royal inheritance." He touched a hand to something he wore below his thick embroidered tunic, at his neck. "You would have slain me had you not directed the flame against the unliving, and had I not been protected." The woman in green mage's robes assisted him to his feet, and Lalla gave her a grateful glance. Pravarsena's older brother was a greying man in middle age like their sister, seeming barely younger than her though eight years lay between them. His face was gaunt and the skin below his eyes was dark as if he had not slept in weeks. The long sleeves of his kurta seemed to conceal metal bangles of rank and openly on his belt he wore an odd-looking crystal bell.
And the boy recognised--the look in his face was clear as day--his mother. The female mage too went suddenly pale.
"Fool," Jayadevii snapped back. "You will help me to salvage this situation and you will be silent while doing so."
"Well, it seems that Shyressa contacted us both," Lalla said. "I had thought I was faster than you, sister. My apologies. I would suggest that you walk out of that gate and allow our father to keep one child, or at least send your hostages and your underexperienced guards that way, except that it seems to have ceased to exist. So all glory of defeating Shyressa of the Twisted Rune and reclaiming our disreputable young brother shall be both of ours, it seems. What a mess, that we both were goaded to act according to hopes of proving ourselves."
"I note you bring but one servitor. Pray tell what foolishness you hoped from that," Jayadevii said.
"Pray tell why you underestimate me so. Already three have been lost to mist and death, to join Pravarsena's braves there. Physical force is nothing against this witch. Now have your mage summon anything she may reach for; and Lady Anjanaa will do the same that at least we shall have a distraction.
"Agree that I lead and give me the Makanmani, and your armlets," Jayadevii said. "I may need them."
"I use them. Shyressa will hear our quarrel. I know I tend to over speak but I ask you to hurry, sister," Lalla said.
"I do not rescue you until you acknowledge my right as eldest." Jayadevii rested on her spear. She was foolish--Khalid could smell the dead men's sickly decay; below that might well have been the vampire herself. The witch's maw was all about them and the siblings only quarrelled among themselves--
Then Lalla's mage spoke softly to him, and he answered in a similar tone. Then he addressed his sister, his Skrtavak now more politely modulated.
"Lady Anjanaa has given me pressing reason to follow you, sister, so I shall use my birthrights by your direction. Accept this before the demon swallows us all--and do strike your prisoners free that they may try to save themselves. You surely cannot intend to offer a child for her devouring."
"I did not intend that," Jayadevii said, after a pause. "Stand by me. Have the mages craft constructs. Then the soldiers will advance, the prisoners before them. The demon pisacha must be hiding deep within her lair behind illusions."
"Tell me again who these prisoners are, please," Lalla said. "A Calishite half-elf--a halfling of perhaps Amnian blood. What have they to do with a valleyfolk boy? Are they allies of the vampire, or else? And who casts those heads to stare with such eyes at us?"
The bulging eyes of the severed heads now glowed an unearthly, horrid green. They blinked several times, long and short. He fights in--in the only way he knows--and I fear. At least his mother is present. A mother must always love her child. Khalid's bound hands rested on the child's shoulder, and he felt a strange buzzing below his skin that must be something of the Waal-Baqi's casting.
"You would them fed to her as much as I, Lalla, for they are Harpers," Jayadevii said. She gave him no time to be shocked. "You and your mage are not fools and you know what the child is. Now advance. Anjanaa--" For the lady had moved toward her son. "--by me." For another brief moment Anjanaa exchanged words with Prince Lalla; then she obeyed him, moving back at Jayadevii's direction.
The mages raised shadows from the ground and air. Khalid thought he saw a trace of surprise in Anjanaa's face at what her summoning magics wrought: they were not animals as those Jaheira called from glen and under wood, nor imps nor goblins nor kobold, too unformed for these. Black shapes that shifted nigh as ominously as Shyressa herself. The light in the eyes of the heads died down, and they swivelled to their former position and stayed inert on their stakes.
"A wise choice," Jayadevii said. "Now forward--and have a care for your step."
And then in but one tread Khalid saw only mist before and behind him. He heard Flores' muffled cry below her gag and one of the soldiers cursed in Dehlavi. He heard a woman's distant shout. Strange screaming faces flowed white before him, and then he felt brown snakes crawl across arms and face.
He and the child were free. The mists pressed in and they stood on a large smooth black stone.
"Snakes were harder. Something that's been alive's easier, like the heads, or something I know already is alive like Walking-the-Walls. But I can't see my mother any more," Anjanaa's son said.
"Then we will find her." They had taken his sword. This disappearance was in no way natural. Khalid called loudly and heard no answer, even though the others should scarcely be a step away from them among the mists. Flores...
The child raised his voice in an odd song, words of a strange way of Skrtavak turning back on themselves. "Stepping on a crack will break the world in two will crack the way the step will world the break inside will step the world in rack and ruin..."
"The m-mist between the stones. That is what causes harm?" Khalid said. Illusion. There must be illusion.
"They took the world and did not put it back the moment the gate turned and the moment the vetala invited us within her kingdom or is it called a queendom?" the boy said.
"It m-matters more to get out. Take my hand." The disjoint words spoke to Khalid of another plane, a place not the world they lived: magery the likes of he had never seen before.
"I can see her chiorescent threads in the air." The child's hand reached up to join Khalid's. "Don't step in a crack, or her mists will take us back."
One smooth black stone to the next, jumping, and the mists were so thick still that nothing else could be heard. We should hurry for the other lives may already have ceased--pray that they have not, Khalid thought; but caution lest worse happen. He lifted the boy clearly over the mists between the crack, wondering madly and wildly what his mother had named him at birth.
"Clear," the boy said, highly and firmly, stopping to point at a space in the white mists. Khalid saw nothing. "I said, clear! Come to life. You are here. Khalid, it's pretending not to listen to me. It's there. Mother says I have wild fits that only bad boys have but it's there. Strong hands can open a door."
Khalid saw nothing; none of the minor inconsistencies that eye could use to spot unreal spell of illusion. Cautiously he placed a gloved hand over upon the mists and felt nothing.
The boy stamped a foot. "Too slow! Don't pretend to not touch it! A bit down, a bit right. And push! The threads make you want to see what they hide! That's...
"That's the door," the child said, and his voice dropped to a whisper.
Elderwood inlaid with gold and lettering of Calishite origin, and now it had swung shut behind them over on the mists. Below their feet were tiles in girih-mosaics painted twoscore dazzling colours, sharp-pointed stars in his birthland's pattern swirling to cut them deep. Khalid leaned back on the vast doors to try to make them open, but they held as if they were iron-barred on the other side. Mage-barred, more like.
"There are too many colours. It makes my head hurt. I want my mother." The child sniffed.
Then find her, Khalid told himself. Fulfil your promise. Floors could be trapped; behind closed gilt doors monsters could lie in wait. He bent down and pried a single gold tile from the floor. Then he threw it in front of them, waiting for signs of traps.
If they stop us from going back we must go forth. He said as much and they stepped toward the first door within.
--
Destroyer 4/6
Started by
Guest_Blue-Inked_Frost_*
, Jul 29 2012 09:07 PM
Khalid Xzar Harpers Durpar undead behaving badly
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Also tagged with one or more of these keywords: Khalid, Xzar, Harpers, Durpar, undead behaving badly
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