Child of Thunder (Chapter Seven)

Chapter Seven: An Invitation to Breakfast

There are but two things you need to know about the night we passed as captives.

First, that despite several hours of discussion, we’d come up with no feasible plan. We were trapped in a room with only one exit, which was heavily guarded. We had no weapons, and Gryndor could think of no tricks that could get us out. Apparently, whatever stone the building around us was born of, it made magic very difficult.

Secondly, Gryndor had taught me a new spell. It was the art of being “difficult to notice”. The deer had told me that it would make me mentally slippery to others, and difficult to focus on. Essentially, it was the power of invisibility without the pesky issue of not being able to see my feet. If I could master it. He had stressed that that would take a little time.

Passing the night on bare, cold rock is one life experience I could have done without. Even with my cloak laid out beneath me, it was still terribly uncomfortable. I woke up stiff and hungry, my toes freezing. As I idly looked at my surroundings as I awoke, it took me a moment to notice that Daale and Gryndor were bound again, along with Hayfinch the rabbit.

I alone was free, not counting the timid beasts who’d been watching us from the corner. I was certain after some observation they were mostly rabbits, along with a few squirrels and a fox. What the poor things had done to deserve being trapped here, I could not say. I alone was free. A thin brown bear stood near the door, one I didn’t think I’d seen before. He seemed to have been waiting for something. When he stepped forward as I stirred, I realized he’d been waiting for me to wake up.

“Good morning sir. The mighty wizard Xyd, overseer of Ursyne labor camp number seven wishes to extend to you an invitation to breakfast. Immediately upon your awakening, you are to make haste and meet with him at your earliest convenience.” When I did not respond, the bear added. “Your earliest convenience… is now, if I’m not mistaken. Let’s be moving along, sir.”

There was no sign of any chains or ropes. They weren’t going to bind me. I could hardly believe it. I didn’t think Gryndor could have anticipated things going this way, but he couldn’t have possibly picked a better skill to teach me.

I followed the bear out of the room I’d passed such uncomfortable time in. We moved into a long hall. Two bears stood on either side of us, guarding the exit, each wielding an enormous mace with wicked spikes sprouting from the business end. One of them glanced at me and snarled, as if he were reluctant to let me leave.

Immediately I went to work on making myself invisible. I concentrated on making my presence shrink. In my minds’ eye I pictured myself growing smaller and smaller. I imagined people looking for me and looking straight through me. There were magic words to this spell just like the others, but I was afraid if I uttered anything strange, it would alert the bear to my intentions. I was also afraid it wouldn’t work at all… if Gryndor had difficulties here, why should I be any different? But the deer had also told me that the rules would not always apply to me, perhaps one of the most significant things anyone had told me since my arrival.

We walked down the hall and through several twisting corridors. At first, the bear chatted with me, telling me about bear things I didn’t entirely understand. Most of them seemed to have to do with happenings in the city.

After a few minutes of attempting to make my existence as thin as a shadow, he spoke less. The bear grew confused, twice stopping midsentence. He seemed to have gotten the feeling he’d been talking to himself, then remembered I was there. Finally when we reached a crossroads with corridors stretching away in either direction, I fled.

I didn’t know where I was going. I ran just to run. The spell I was working had its limitations, however. The guard was confused, but he wasn’t going to forget about me or fail to see which way I’d gone. I was pretty sure it was possible to achieve true invisibility, but not without practice. Indeed, it wasn’t long before I heard the creature giving chase, nails scraping against stone.

The hallway curved and I nearly ran right into a large bear with fur as dark as a moonless night sky. I skidded to a stop mere seconds from running into him. He looked downward with a frown, probably as confused as the bear barreling down the hallway on all fours after me.

I did an about face and ran another way. This time, I didn’t run for long before I burst outside. Daylight dazzled my eyes as early morning cold bit into my bare chest. There was dew on the ground, I could feel it on the blades of grass beneath my feet. I cast an eye back towards the building I’d left. Both bears were in pursuit now.

I woozily dropped to my knees with sudden exhaustion and was forced to let the spell drop. Hiding in plain sight was no longer an option. Not that it had gone particularly well for me in the first place. Ahead of me I saw nothing but fields, beasts already toiling despite the youth of the day. Was that our fate if we stayed here? If we failed somehow to escape? My heart burned with a passion to see everyone here free, and to see every one of these awful slapdash buildings fall to the ground in heaps of ashes, their embers the only life left.

That’s all this valley was to me. A place of hatred and fear.

The skinny brown bear caught up to me in the same instance that a black vulture swooped out of the sky. It looked just like the one I’d seen yesterday, except it had an eyepatch over one eye. “We knew you would not be able to handle the child,” the vulture slurred mockingly, voice strangely thick.

“I had it under control!” The bear cried, his patience long spent. “The second bear watched everything passively. “How dare you run away from me!” Brown Fur cried, striking me across the chest, raking his sharp claws into my flesh.

I cried out as I fell backward, the blow knocking me off my feet. I was ready to expend the last of my energy incinerating the bear, but the vulture intervened, stepping between us. “Do not think your actions will go unpunished, foolish one.” The bird hissed. The bird stretched out a gloved hand and helped me to my feet. “I was to deliver him unharmed. What shall I tell Xyd now, hmm?”

This statement seemed to turn the bear’s heart to liquid and his legs to jelly. He caved fearfully, all but dropping to his knees and begging.

“Please, Xynder, I’m sorry. I was frustrated. He just gave me the slip, that’s all.” But his cries fell on deaf ears, the vulture ignored him, stretching out a long black wing and ushering me away.

“Your time in this camp does not have to be unpleasant. As long as you do as Xyd askes, you will probably survive alright. Your friends however… will not live long much longer, I can promise you that.” It was the bird’s turn to have words fall to someone unwilling to hear. “Have a little care in the company you keep, or your doom is most assuredly near.”

I held my tongue, knowing nothing I had to say would please him. The bird walked me to the tower that stood at the center of the settlement. It was frighteningly unstable in appearance, perhaps the worst of all the structures in the camp. Just a skeletal frame of wooden beams capped by a building that looked too large for its stilts. It seemed to be completely closed off to the outside world. The only openings I saw seemed to be little slits, a few of which seemed to have little twigs sticking out of them.

"You're a lucky child to have caught Xyd's eye. Fleeing was unwise, as I'm sure you'll soon learn." I was pushed towards a ladder than looked as though it would collapse with a touch. Yet I didn't feel I had much choice, the way that bird stared with its single eye.

My limbs felt heavy as I began my ascent. This magic business was a frustrating endeavor. I was tired of feeling exhausted all the time. It made it hard to think. It felt crucial that I have all my faculties but there wasn't much I could do about that now, was there?

A slender square of black soon gobbled me up. I emerged into a dimly lit sort of nest. Twigs and such lined all the walls. At the center of the room there was a layer of forest debris that lay like a carpet. I stood in between, a layer of sticks behind, the heart of the vulture's lair ahead.

The bird sat on a soiled pillow, a little gaggle of his awful friends hunching around him. Thin slats of light slithered in through slots that probably afforded a view of the whole camp. Somebody could easily cast their glance through one without alerting anyone down below they were being spied upon.

“Come closer, little boy…” Xyd crowed. His feathers were a patchwork of black and white. It seemed Gryndor’s magic had had a lasting effect. The vultures stared silently at me as I approached, feeling uncomfortable and vulnerable. Blood from the scratches on my chest ran down in long red lines. They were shallow cuts, but they still stung. I crossed my arms and walked forward, wondering what the awful beast could what from me.

If I hadn’t already worn myself a little too thin, I might have tried to kill the bird right there. I couldn’t help feeling it would save us a little trouble. As it was, I just stood there hunched a bit. It was colder up here, even colder than the morning air had been. In the shadows I probably almost looked like another vulture, shoulders stiff.

“You may be wondering why you are here, but the wise and powerful Xyd is not without his mercies. This place may seem like squalor, but I can give you anything you desire, I assure you.” As if on cue, my stomach began to rumble. A steaming bowl of what looked like rice suddenly appeared before me, hovering just within reach. An appetizing scent filled the air, enticing me to reach forward. My hand however grasped nothing but empty air. The image wavered and vanished.

The smell clung to my nostrils for a moment, its lingering only serving to make me hungrier than ever. What sort of devilry was this? “You invite me to breakfast, then offer me teasing parlor tricks?” I replied petulantly. “No thank you sir.”

“I can show you more than tricks, foolish child.” Xyd answered, his calm cracking like a dam under strain. “Believe you me.” The room lit up suddenly as if from a thousand torches, and yet I saw no source of light. Tables all around us groaned under the weight of the food they bore. Feast upon feast, a banquet for an army, all of it filling the bird’s nest with pleasing aromas.

But I felt certain that, as before, it was all a ruse.

I shook my head, unimpressed.

Xyd sighed and spoke slowly, as if dealing with an unruly child. “Do you not understand what I’m offering you?” The vulture stamped his foot against the ground, and the room went dark again. In the shadow I could tell all the tantalizing food had vanished. “The emperor is a powerful beast. This whole world is going to be in his control sooner or later…” Xyd intoned.

Suddenly I saw before me a square like a window. It floated in the air between the vultures and I, showing a landscape of green. It rolled across fields and hills, terrain that looked exactly like the place I’d traversed with Gryndor and Daale. Soon enough misty mountainside appeared within. The window grew, encompassing my full field of view. It swooped through a cloud, and I felt cold air brush against my cheeks. A lungful of rainy air filled my lungs.

And then it was gone. I was flying high over the mountains, over everything, till the whole earth seemed to be there beneath me. The sight of it was breathtaking.

To the south, jungle.

To the north, an ocean. The whorl of a large island chain lay there like a great eye, staring at the world around it.

To the west, a smattering of immense forests. The rapidly shrinking realm of the deer.

And to the east… desert. For reasons I could not fathom, my heart began to pound when I caught side of that sandy expanse. Something of my destiny lay in that place.

After seeming to hang there up high for a long time, I suddenly began to feel as though I was falling. The mountains grew closer again, but we didn’t narrow in on the labor camp like I expected. Instead, Uryn grew near, that city born from the husk of a dead mountain. The streets flew by. I saw bears going about their day, guards patrolling the streets, even a skinny little thing balancing on a ball. He was snuffing out the light in a lantern with a long pole.

After a few minutes spent flying low through the streets of the city, the doors of the palace appeared before me. I’d seen them from a distance before, when I’d been clambering up to the tower, but never so close up. They were enormous silver things, shimmering with images and effigies. My perspective moved right towards the door as if to crash through it but I passed through immaterially. On the other side a courtyard sprawled, layered with gardens and bush mazes.

Then it was on through another set of gleaming double doors, into a cavernous hall. A great bear, larger than any I’d ever seen, sat at court there. His throne was the size of a wagon, with cushions that would have surely swallowed me up.

Basson knelt before him. “My spies report Daale has arrived at camp seven to the north.”

Suddenly it all disappeared. I nearly hit the floor, feeling jarred. It was as though I’d been picked up and then dropped without warning. Or perhaps more accurately, it was like climbing stairs in the dark, suddenly you reach out, and there’s one less stair than you expect, and you nearly lose your footing. I’d lost my awareness of myself in the strange forced vision I’d just experienced, and hadn’t been expecting to gain it back so suddenly.

“So you see, such is the strength and splendor of your emperor. I even in all my power serve him. Think on that before you resist me.” The sorcerer had an awestruck quality to his voice. I wondered if everyone had seen things as I’d seen them.

My convictions were firm.

“There is nothing to think about,” I replied a bit haughtily. “I would never help you, nor join your cause. I would sooner die.”

“Do not think that cannot be all too easily arranged,” Xyd replied. The rage was less veiled this time. I was angering him. It was clear his strange tricks were meant to impress me. My unfeeling dismissal of what the vulture had shown me infuriated him.

As it turned out, however, I would never have to worry about my next move. Gryndor made it for me.

“I am sorry,” The wizard said, “but the only death on the docket for the day is your own.” With that I saw the bird suddenly fall forward, collapsing to the floor. Gryndor pulled a bloody knife from Xyd’s back and began to wipe it clean with a rag produced from somewhere within the folds of his robe.

Just like that, the mighty wizard Xyd, overseer of Ursyne labor camp number seven was…

Dead.