Chapter 8

When Sorel found the road, stretching east from the border of the forest, he sat, without thought, on the concrete—something he could not corrupt. He became again that little boy, alone. But this time, there were no comforting voices in the blue shadows and black branches in his night. This time, he was truly alone—an enemy of his friends and friend to his enemy. His tail flipped beside him, searching for warmth in the sunlight. It found none. Even that had abandoned him. And so he sat, leagues from any other living being, on human creation—something inanimate, something immune to his influence. Had any traveler found him, he or she might have deemed him an ungodly statue of horrific artist hands. Had he then moved, the traveler would have certainly screamed, turned, and fled, to relate his or her encounter with a demon over a mug of ale at some tavern as far from his place as possible.

Footsteps behind him shook him from his dream. The sun had lowered itself significantly towards the horizon. His long, sensitive ears told him the footsteps were not human. As he stood to face the visitor, he stared at the concrete beneath his feet, his tail twitching. Then a familiar iridescent voice called his eyes up to her own, “You are as I am, now. Perhaps we should start over, Sorel, hunter of the Corcea.”

Sorel locked his gaze with Amalia’s. “You did this to me. You drove me from any comfort I ever had. Why? Why should I ever…” Sorel demanded, voice quivering, but she interrupted him.

“Sorel, look at yourself. Look at me.” She walked upright, but boasted the same sleek coat of fur he did, though her’s was tinted a sandy brown—his a dark grey, nearly black on his back. Her long thin face and smoldering eyes burned with something less than apology, but more than sympathy. “I did this to myself,” she continued. “As did you.” She ventured a step closer. “Yet we are more than something foul. We do not always and completely corrupt.” She crouched and examined a blade of grass, struggling against the concrete, vying for room for its roots, cracking and overcoming through time. Clasping it between her fingers, Amalia watched with empathetic eyes as the green flushed with color, then dried into a withered, dead thing, hanging in her simple grasp. “It is this form that reflects our master—it is his power that flows through us, now.” Here she paused, catching and holding Sorel’s confused glance. “It is not corruption that destroys. It is an overabundance of power—of life itself.” She let the blade fall to the concrete, where it shattered into dust.

“But in other forms, that power is diminished, and may restore life.” Before him, she transformed into her human form. She bent over the leaf and breathed a word on it. The brown faded, green rushed back into its veins as it stretched again towards the receeding sun. “Sorel,” Amalia continued, “it is a fragile thing, life is. And as you are, you possess to much life; to much power for the trees to understand. The burning they felt was not poison, Sorel, but fertilizer—something too potent for them to understand. And they feared you.” She rose to his side and again took her Corcea body. “Don’t you understand? With time, and practice you may return to the forest, not as corruptor, but as keeper—one who will preserve them for years. You have been given a gift, Sorel. Learn to use it, as I have, to bring life, not to destroy it.”

Sorel snorted. “Yet you attempted to destroy me.”

“Destroy? No, Sorel. Change,” she asserted. “I knew the power within you, I could see it. As a Corcea, you would have the power to destroy ultimately, as perhaps I feel our master wishes, or to restore ultimately.” Amalia lowered her eyes to the blade of grass. “I took a chance with you, Sorel. I brought you to our master, to complete your transformation. To you I left, I leave, the choice to corrupt or to resurrect.” She lowered her voice and whispered in his left ear. “You have the potential to become more powerful than he…you can redeem the forest from his grasp. You must, Sorel. For my sake, for all who exist under his power. You’re power does not completely stem from him, as does mine. You learned of it as a human, and now, as a Corcea, you are that much more powerful.” Her voice dropped off into nothing more than blocked exhalations. “You are our savior, Sorel.”

He exhaled his confusion and stepped back. Her liquid eyes begged him to comply. But the oak’s words still reverberated within him: “Do not look.” Was he not to follow what seemed the obvious. He wanted to trust her; he desired to know that the trees were misguided and that he could revive them for eternity—to exist as their friend, forever.

“How can I trust you?” he finally managed to ask her. She looked to the sky, as if asking its advice. Then she wiped away the fur from her face and took her human form. Soft fingers held his jaw and compassionate eyes caressed his own.

“Trust this,” she whispered and closed his eyes with her thumbs. He felt her lips press against his own for a moment—which became something like an eternity. He lost himself in space, forgetting time. When the light came back to his eyes, it was clear and warm. She still held his face in her hands. “Look at yourself, now,” she urged with a smile.

Sorel glanced at his hands: the delicate, rounded fingers; pink skin, stained with blue veins. He felt his own face, smooth cheeks. His ears were again small and round and long, dark hair fell over them. He looked back at Amalia, who nodded him towards the grass. He stepped off the concrete and onto the vegetation. Nothing happened, except the tingle on the soles of his feet that made him laugh.

“You see?” Amalia chimed, “there is beauty, still, in who you are. In who we are.” Sorel stilled himself.

“How did you do it. How can I change myself?” he asked.

“Have you forgotten everything? Remember your bird. That charming little blackbird you knew. How did you change then? And, how you will change now!” Sorel’s memory lit with epiphany. He took two steps and leapt into the air, his blackbird wings catching him, wheeling him higher into the afternoon atmosphere. Amalia joined him, now as a thrush, in his aerial acrobatics. She sung to him, “You knew the blackbird well. Do you know an eagle?” Sorel dove quickly and rose on more powerful wings: eagle wings. A falcon with Amalia’s eyes screeched at his side. The bland world of desperation and loneliness disappeared below him. Here, he felt free again. He fixed an eye on Amalia, his liberator and asked with a glance, where are we going?

She rolled twice and veered off to the northwest, saying, back to him. To learn how to defeat him. Sorel dipped his wing and followed her. Finally, something made sense; at last, he understood why he had looked.

^*^

Dr. Livingbree’s epiphany did not come as they usually did. Instead of striking him in the shower or on the toilet, it came to him on his morning walk. And instead of forming itself as a question in his mind that demanded answering, this time it came as a bold statement that blistered his thoughts: Fargon was a name he knew; a name the Emperor knew, too; a name that neither he nor the Emperor would ever forget; a name that made Olin’s assassination attempt as far removed from the Imperial Special Forces as the blasted east from the west. His pace quickened and he made it back to his manor five minutes early. The first phone call he would make would be to the research center; the second, to Olin.

^*^

Though Olin’s eyes rarely left the road, his mind concentrated on the information he was streaming from the database. IHT was an archaeological institution whose charter was to examine the ancient ruins recently discovered just north of the Tiri Desert. Fourteen employed scientists lived there, raising a greater annual salary each than that of Dr. Livingbree himself. Whatever is going on there, must be of immense value to the Empire, Olin mused and scanned other relevant data while he programmed its exact location into the vehicle’s navigational system—just a small jaunt from his current position.

From the overview, he determined that the ruins were those of late Escollion descent, dating to the Second Civil War, when the Sages and Dark Tribunal finally collided in brutal combat, after joining to defeat the last Masok invasion and scattering the reptilian race to the four winds. The ruins were rumored to be a religious site, where the Dark Lords, who had in the end been defeated by the Archsage Illumni Falta, gathered to seal their power for a future return. Various histories accounted that their spell had failed and the Sages slaughtered the Dark Lords of the Tribunal to end the war and restore peace to the land.

Olin couldn’t figure out why the Emperor would maintain such an interest here, at the northwestern borders of the world—unless he somehow believed in the ancient lore of the magical powers these lords possessed. It was ridiculous, of course, to think of this power in their common era. It was scientific discovery, rationalization of the world, that accomplished miracles now. The miracle of electric light after dark, mechanical minds, a cure for every ailment, death, even, in his case. Perhaps the Emperor figured he could open a museum that would attract tourists from every part of the land—raise travel taxes, perhaps. Whatever the Emperor’s reasoning, Olin couldn’t understand it.

When he pulled in through the gate, a metallic fence closed behind him. Olin was astounded at the simplicity of the site. A long portable trailer, apparently the housing, rested on the northern side of the compound, and another similar one decorated the southern grounds. The sagebrush had been cleared from the middle, leaving dry, silt dirt surrounding the single, observable remnant of the ruin. A short, dark obelisk rose from the ground encircled by several tents, housing—Olin guessed—the equipment.

Olin stepped carefully from his vehicle, hiding Fargon’s pistol in his overcoat’s pocket. A man with a short, trim beard welcomed him, but stopped in mid-sentence. “Where’s your escort?” he wondered.

Olin fingered the trigger. “Fargon?” he ventured. The man screwed up his face.

“No, no…different name. Jellion. Or something like that,” the scientist said. “He didn’t come with you, then? Oh well. I’m glad you’re here. We thought you might have been held up by the weather or something.”

Or someone, Olin thought to himself. This man was not lying. Fargon had been lying, he knew, though he was good at disguising it. But this was the truth. Perhaps they were not to have known about it. Or perhaps the Empire wasn’t behind it at all. Olin decided he would trust this man.

“My name’s Biln. Pleasure to have you here, Olin. You’ll be staying in the southern compound with the geologists. Hope you don’t mind. We figure you’d take it better than the historians. They’re not much for conversation, and that’s saying a lot, coming from a scientist,” the man chuckled and guided Olin by the shoulder south to his temporary quarters, with a jimmy-rigged re-charge station, he was saying. The figure of shadow loomed in Olin’s peripheral vision: the thought that danced on the edges of an abyss of meaning. It gnawed at his conscious process. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy your stay. Ha, just listen to me, a regular innkeeper. Once you’ve had some time to replenish your energy tanks, come find me at the southwest edge of the dig, okay?”

Olin nodded and entered the haze of dust motes swirling around in front of the receding obscurity of the doorway. Thick, plain curtains veiled the windows, and a spongy, orange, brown, and red-splotched carpet had been laid over what once must have been a flatbed truck. The bunk-beds lining each side, however, did not squeak. Whether by quality or scientific field-modification, Olin couldn’t say. A small electric stove soothed a teapot to life—its first breaths squeezed into a whistle—which drew Olin’s attention to the recharge station, if it could be called that. Olin’s lethargic footsteps did not disturb the carpet, nor the teapot, as he advanced towards the station.

It happened to be the closest thing to sleep he truly experienced now. Yes, he had tested sleep programs—dreams even; though he was reluctant to try them—but when he power down all of his systems, back-up also, and draw power solely from an external source left him the most satisfied—though, his memory argued, not quite like the real thing. Olin considered plugging in, despite its seemingly rudimentary nature. Perhaps he would only shut down his normal systems and leave the back-up’s online. Just in case. The musty air, cool and dry with winter’s ravenous progression convinced him in the end—just to warm the joints. He reclined in the chair and inserted the proper cables. They had done well with the specifications Dr. Livingbree had sent them—judging from what they had to work with. Even that had surprised Olin, considering the high salaries he had discovered in the database. He shoved the questions to temporary memory storage and powered down—one hand still fingering the pistol.