The Malicarn #5
After dusk, Hannah sat in her bed, a single candle beside her, and read her book on astronomy.
There were many drawings, charts of stars, and explanations for their movements.
She hovered over an illustration of the universe: a black hollow orb.
In the middle sat the earth, around which circled the sun and the planets.
The orb was pricked with thousands of small holes all around, letting in the light of Creation beyond: the stars.
The universe was ordered, labeled, contained, and utterly without blemish.
The candle was burning low, the light starting to dim, when she heard footsteps outside her door. The guard spoke, but Hannah could not tell what he said. There was a brief murmur, the scuffle of feet, and then a thump. The door opened slowly.
Hannah leapt out of bed, grabbed the knife under her pillow, and fell against the wall.
She was hidden for only a moment. As the door opened the hallway’s candelabra illuminated the room, and a torchlight threw away the shadows where Hannah hid.
The torch was held by a man, wearing a black shirt emblazoned with the crest of an angry bird.
“Hannah!” Gregorian called out in a whisper. “Hannah, come here!” Behind him Gregorian dragged in the guard, who was unconscious but still breathing.
Hannah stood up, dropping the knife to her side. “What is going on? What did you do to him?”
“He will be okay. I merely drugged him. He’ll only be asleep for a few moments, and other men walk the halls. We must be quick.”
“Quick? Quick for what?”
“Lower your voice.” His clothes were caked with mud from the road. Gregorian pulled the guard to a corner and set him down gently.
“Is something wrong?” Hannah whispered.
Gregorian did not answer at first, his eyes darting around the room. Then he turned to Hannah, leaned over, and grabbed her arm.
“We must go. Now. It is no longer safe for you here.”
“Why? What has happened? Should we return to Kingstown?”
“No, that is not safe anymore, either,” Gregorian said. “We must leave immediately.”
“Leave the keep?
“No, leave the Malicarn.”
Gregorian had never before appeared so spooked.
Hannah changed out of her dress and into a riding outfit of shirt and trousers she had borrowed from the stables but never put on.
Then Hannah and Gregorian climbed down out of the keep through an eastern window, circled around toward the front, snuck out past the gate, and crossed over a creek into the woods.
The wind covered the sounds of boots, and their exit was quick.
She wrapped an extra cloak around her to stay warm.
They kept off the road entirely, heading farther up the mountain.
It did not take long for Hannah to notice why.
From their height she could see the mountain road winding down toward the valley.
But where it should be cloaked in midnight darkness it was illuminated by light, hundreds of torches marching toward the keep.
“What is that?” Hannah asked.
Gregorian didn’t even look. “Men and women of the Malicarn. They are coming for you.”
Hannah suddenly felt tremendous guilt for not sending Kellington and the others away.
They walked through the night; Hannah moved slowly, her leg growing more painful the farther they continued around the mountain. Gregorian did not speak. At one point he turned sharply to look behind them and stopped. When Hannah asked what it was, he shook his head and kept moving.
“I think someone followed me from the Old Village,” Hannah said.
Gregorian merely nodded.
“Did you know?”
“No,” Gregorian said. “Not precisely. But it does not surprise me.”
“Why not? What is going on?”
“We have to keep moving, we will be late.”
Soon, the trees began to spread and the ground leveled out, and then suddenly they entered a clearing of high grass.
In the middle of the field was a slab of smooth rock, overgrown with weeds, as if it were once a floor of a vanished structure.
Hannah examined the ground with interest, but Gregorian looked out toward the horizon, over the hills.
The eastern sky shone with a faint blue glow.
“We will wait here,” Gregorian said. “They should be here soon.”
“What is this place?” Hannah asked.
“An old building from before the Malicarn,” Gregorian said.
Hannah sat herself down on the stone and massaged her leg. She leaned back and looked at the early-morning stars above her.
“Is this all about the dragon? There have been so many rumors of a dragon rider, and the common folk are restless—”
Gregorian sat beside her. “The dragon is not real.”
“What do you mean? You saw it yourself. So did many others.”
“What we saw was not a dragon.”
“Gregorian, you sound mad. This is why my advisors don’t trust you.”
“Hannah, I know there’s no way for me to explain any of this to you in a way that makes sense. Not yet. Let me put it to you this way: The Necromancer controls the Malicarn. He controls all of it. And he controls you, too, whether you realize it or not.”
“The Necromancer? Does he control you?”
“Even me.”
Hannah frowned. “Do the advisors know?”
“No. Nobody does.”
“Except for you.”
“Yes. And a few others. Kreek among them. Kreek is not his actual name, and he’s not actually from the Malicarn. His real name is Brian Doyle.”
Hannah stood up, arms crossed, fingers rattling on her elbows. “And is your name really Gregorian?”
“No. It is Glenn.”
“You have always been honest with me, in your own peculiar way. That is why I trusted you, even if others did not. But you have never said anything about this before. I thought you maintained a truce with our enemies, not that you did their bidding. Are you my enemy?”
“No.”
“I do not believe you. Or, maybe I do. I don’t know what to believe. You were not born in the Malicarn, either, were you?” Hannah asked.
“No.”
“Where are you from?”
“A place called New Jersey.”
“Is it a nice place?”
“Not really.”
“What are the foreign lands like?”
Gregorian stood up. “Well, there is a lot of strife. More so than in the Malicarn, in fact.”
“The Council of Heroes does a good job of protecting us.”
“Yes,” Gregorian said. “I suppose that’s true. But the Council is not free, either. I don’t know, Hannah, how to begin to explain it all. What’s real and what’s not. Even I don’t know anymore.”
“Well, tell me about the stars,” Hannah said, looking back up at the sky.
The sun was getting brighter and only a few morning stars remained visible.
“I was reading a book last night about how they are holes in the blanket of the sky, and the light of the heavens shines through them. Abbott gave me that book, and he is well-read.”
“Well-read in the types of books he owns, yes. But that’s not true, either. Each star is its own sun, like our sun. Far away, with its own worlds.”
“Do you travel to those worlds?”
“No, they are so far away even I cannot get to them.”
“They must be lonely worlds.”
“’Tis new to thee.”
Hannah looked at him. “What?”
Gregorian smiled. “Oh, it’s just a line, from a play I acted in once.”
“You used to be an actor?”
“Used to be? I suppose. But yes, I acted.”
“What is the play?” Hannah asked.
“You will find this amusing, but it is about a wizard, and his daughter, who live on an island removed from the rest of the world. But then the world comes to them. The daughter has never before seen people apart from those who live on the island. And she says: ‘O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O, brave new world that has such people in it!’”
“‘How beauteous mankind is,’” Hannah repeated. “I like that.”
There was a sudden crack from behind them, and Hannah turned to see a woman emerge through the tall grass. She was wearing an outfit that appeared to be made out of leaves.
“Where is Roger?” Gregorian asked her.
“Circling. There are a lot of armed mobs wandering about. He didn’t want to stay still.” The woman looked at Hannah. “Why is she here?”
“I had to bring her. She isn’t safe.”
“Good morning,” Hannah said. She bowed her head at the woman. “Are you an outsider?”
“This is Lilly,” Gregorian said. “She is an old friend.”
Lilly did not bow back. “Where’s the scanner?”
“At the Citadel.”
“Still?”
“The people are rising. There wasn’t time. I had to get Hannah.”
“And the pilot?”
“I’m not exactly sure where he is.”
“Christ, Glenn. Can you do nothing right? What were you thinking we’d do? You didn’t even try to call or—”
“We can go back. I know where the scanner is.”
Lilly rubbed her forehead. “Still with him, right? Unbelievable. Well, let’s go. We’ll have to be quick to stay on schedule.”
“How much time do you think we have?” Gregorian asked.
“Not much. I will tell Roger to keep circling for now.”
Lilly took out a small device, a black box, and spoke to a voice that sounded far away.
“Yes, yes,” she shouted at the voice. “Just stay tight. It won’t take long.” Then she looked at Gregorian. “The access road is still the same?”
“Yes.”
Lilly cocked her head to say Let’s go, and Gregorian and Hannah followed.
“Where are we going now?” Hannah asked as they cut through the woods and onto a large, smooth road.
“The Citadel,” said Gregorian.
“What? But the Necromancer lives there, it’s dangerous!”
“No, Hannah. It is not. It is—”
He didn’t have time to finish. A rock flew out of the forest, barely missing Gregorian’s head.
“What the hell?” said Lilly.
There was a brief moment of absolute quiet, then Hannah saw a shadow pass over them and land beside Gregorian. He yelled as the figure wrapped itself around his neck and knocked him to the ground.
“The Necromancer!” Hannah yelled.
But it wasn’t the Necromancer. It was just a man. Buck, the mason from the mill, shirt still covered in mortar, his face in dirt. He held a knife in one hand and fell hard against the ground, holding Gregorian around his neck.
Buck and Gregorian rolled down the road, and as Lilly began to run after them another noise flew down from above them.
Immediately behind them appeared a dozen, no, two dozen, people with torches, knives, swords.
They were marching so fast they were nearly running, frantically looking for someone, something. For Hannah.
Buck had pulled Gregorian behind a tree. The two of them stood between Lilly and the mob. “Go!” Gregorian shouted, his voice choked by the mason. “Go now!” Buck fell backward, off the road, and he and Gregorian disappeared down a steep hill.
“Run!” Lilly shouted, and she and Hannah flew down the road. Hannah’s leg shot pain up her side but she kept moving, glancing over her shoulder at the encroaching mob. The road twisted down the mountain, but Lilly took shortcuts, jumping from one switchback to another. Hannah followed.
“We have to go back for Gregorian,” Hannah yelled after her.
“No.” That was all Lilly said.
The Citadel, whose black frame and smooth obsidian walls could be glimpsed from the top of the Mountain Keep, appeared suddenly before them.
They were approaching it from the rear. Legends and tales about the Citadel long haunted children of the Malicarn, and the mere distant sight of it kept most people from ever traveling too far east. The cries of the mob became suddenly stilled by its sight.
Even Hannah slowed her run, but Lilly did not.
The fortress was shaped like a cube, and the walls shimmered in the morning sun, but Lilly ran right up to it as if there was nothing to fear.
“Lilly?” Hannah asked. “I don’t think this is safe.”
“It’s nearly empty,” Lilly said, approaching a doorway. “I hope we’re not too late.”
Lilly went inside, so Hannah followed. She didn’t know what else to do.
The whole building seemed imbued with a deep magic.
The doors, made of smooth glass, opened on their own as they passed through, and Hannah was hit by a breeze of cool air.
The inside was not threatening at all, but oddly quiet and calm.
Seats and tables were arrayed across a brightly illuminated hall.
A banner with the letters WBC in a grand design hung on the wall.
“Stay close to me,” Lilly said.
The building appeared mostly empty, though as they passed down side hallways the occasional person would appear out of a room, gasp, then run away. They traveled up moving staircases and at one point entered a closet that, when they reemerged, left them in a completely new space.
Finally, in a white hall that echoed as they walked through it, they approached a brown door. A sign hung from it that read WRITERS’ ROOM, and scrawled in sloppy script underneath was “Pardon the smell.”
Lilly opened the door. A large round table and several chairs sat in the middle of the room.
Stacks of paper and boxes of various shapes sat on the floor, on the table, and in every conceivable corner, just as in the Privy Council chamber.
On the wall hung a dozen or so paintings, lifelike as any Hannah had ever seen.
And they were all moving, acting out some scene.
There was only one person in the room, a man hunched over the central table. He had long hair that fell at his shoulders, and he wore pants but no shirt. He did not seem much like a wizard. But when he turned and saw them he was not surprised.
“It’s nice to see you again, Lilly,” he said. “After all this time.”
Hannah noticed the paintings on the wall changing to different scenes, different people and places.
As she watched them she saw that they weren’t paintings at all, but mirrors.
Mirrors to the Malicarn. She recognized the central square in the Old Village, the castle courtyard in Kingstown, views of the valley, people walking.
A man milked a cow, a woman fed a baby, people were running through the Mountain Keep with swords.
It was the Malicarn, all of it, right before her.
“Where is it?” Lilly asked the man at the table.
“Where is what?”
“Don’t be foolish, Jules. I am not here to play.”
The man laughed. He laughed a long time. He laughed and laughed and leaned back in his chair and laughed some more. One of the images above him changed to a new scene. Gregorian, hands tied, dragged by Buck. Hannah watched him drop Gregorian in a dark room, under a colorful window.
“Of course you are here to play,” the Necromancer said. “Whatever else is there to do?”