Book III
Chapter Eleven
The PHANTOM of HOPE
Before Pa’ka opened his eyes, he could’ve sworn he was back in his childhood home.
The smell of scrolls, and ink, and old clay.
The sound of clattering wood, as his father collected kindling from the dry room, to light the hearth before Pa’ka and his sister woke. He was always doing things like that, almost in secret. Tiny kindnesses, that Pa’ka never appreciated until they were gone.
The feeling was a kind of ache.
Not new, so much as forgotten, on purpose.
Even the smell was similar. Outside of the wand shop, Ne’jum stank of still waters and corpse carts. But something about this building stopped any of that from getting in, so long as that door was closed.
The wand shop, Pa’ka thought.
His eyelids finally peeled open, though his look was empty. He seemed a shell of himself, to anyone who might’ve been watching.
But no one was watching. Pa’ka could see that.
Nal’kuth’ra was taking down a wand, to examine it closer, and dropped a rack of them. Perhaps the sound of wands being picked up, put down, dropped, and so on was what reminded Pa’ka of the kindling in the dry room.
Brun and Ul’druk had found a huge map-scroll, and had spread it out on the hardwood floor. It was not a map of the city, but a map of…
“This is Snowjaw,” Ul’druk said. He was astonished, which was not a trait Pa’ka had seen much in the soldier. “But not just Snowjaw… It’s…”
“This is incredible,” Brun said.
Ul’druk ran his longest finger along a path, stopping at a few markings. Pa’ka couldn’t see any of it, but it reminded him of working in I’ka’s cart, combing through the maps. That had been (far and away) the best part of working for the hag. She had not been kind, nor generous, nor a very good teacher. Nor did she pay him much, or often. She gave him and his sister a bed to sleep in, but it was in a hoarder’s cart, and stank of exotic alcohols and sweat.
He wondered how his sister was doing. She would be…
She just turned seventeen, he thought. His twentieth birthnight would be coming up soon. He didn’t exactly miss Orc’shire, but he did miss his sister. Little Zam’j. Not so little anymore.
This were only some of the thoughts that weighed on Pa’ka. His mind raced, in rememberances of all his past lives, of everything that happened before he went on his… On… whatever this was.
He tried to remember why he left, but it was…
No, he thought. That’s not true.
He knew exactly why he’d left Orc’shire.
He wondered where Rowan was, and closed his eyes, and pretended to be asleep until the others all left.
* * * * / * * * *
“Better?” said the raspy voice of the half-orc.
They all looked around, to see where the voice was coming from. Everyone but Pa’ka, who was still sleeping, sound as a stone in hiding.
The half-orc laughed, and suddenly he was there. He was leaning against a doorway, arms crossed, one foot over the other.
“So easily startled,” he mused. Then he shrugged. “Not that it’s a bad thing. Good to be alert.”
Ul’druk rose, and pointed. “Where did you get this map?”
“That map?” he said. “I made it.”
Ul’druk scoffed. “That’s impossible.”
“Why? Who are you to say what can or can’t be done?”
“This is a map,” said Ul’druk, “of a tomb that has been sealed for—”
“I know what it is,” said Keeper. “I made it. In my body’s life.”
The half-orc un-appeared, then reappeared on the ground, sitting crosslegged, with his elbows on his knees and his chin on his palms.
“Oh yes,” he said, sighing. “This was an important map for me. Not the first. Not the… I dunno, not the last, certainly, nor the last of its kind. But I think it may be… the best. The most thorough.”
He folded his arms, leaned back, and shot a shrug at Ul’druk.
“Long time ago, though. Nearly, what… two hundreds years ago? Almost three. Long before I became…”
His grin returned. Tusks and flat teeth. Colourless slitted eyes.
“…this.”
“This is the Snowjaw Temple,” said Ul’druk. “It has been sealed for hundreds of years. How could you p—?”
“Two hundred and forty-three years, yes,” said Keeper. “And now it’s impenetrable. Fact is this : this map would not be very useful there now. Beautiful as it is. Immaculate, if I may… praise my own work in such a way. You see this? This chamber here? That’s the flower room.”
Ul’druk scoffed again. “Flowers don’t grow in Snowjaw!”
“No,” smiled Keeper. “They don’t. But there are about a thousand clay scrolls in that room, all about flowers. Not plants… Not soil, no… Just flowers.”
Keeper’s flesh grew thin, almost see-through, before he disappeared entirely. It was not a vanishing, though, not exactly. Simply a weakening of his visual form. Keeper was still there, but the illusion of a body faded, as the phantom let it fade.
“My master (one of my favourites, actually) once said… Heh. He used to call the temple, The Library of I’bru. It wasn’t canon, of course. You can’t read that anywhere. It wasn’t from a… vision, or a… anything like that ; I asked him once. But he just liked to call it that. That’s what Master Ngang’ko used to say, at least. He just liked the sound of it.”
Only Keeper’s eyes remained, those colourless slits hanging in the air, darting, and smiling, and sometimes squinting.
“That’s what I wrote at the top of the map, in the tongue of the Old Giants. In the oldest language I know of. They never called it that, but… In Giant, it rings like a truth.”
Ul’druk looked down at the map. He noted all the various complicated symbols, and the legend at a top corner to help the wanderer decode the image. The map was a mess of exactness.
Then, Keeper spoke again. His voice was hollower, louder, more clearly the voice of a phantom.
“I have… wasted time, I’m afraid. In six moons, the Lich shall fall. I have seen it. Others have seen it. It is the fate of you, in this room, to bring that to fruition, but… life does not run in straight lines. The path seems to meander, but all water flows down, until it tastes the salt of Father Sea.”
Kaye heard the sounds, but the phantom spoke in Orcish. It was not the same thing as when the burrowfolk spoke mind-speech, or the Death Knight, or even Na’la. The mind-speech was beyond words. It had no grammar. No rhythm. It simply was. Not images, but something like images. The language of visions. For Kaye, it was the language of his nightmares.
But the phantom spoke a language, a language of modern words, in the accent of his time and place. There was simply no hope of Kaye understanding what was being said, and so he simply sat there, clutching his staff, and moped.
“The Lich shall fall?” said Brun. He looked around the room, as if he could find the image of Keeper once again. “Truly?”
“Truly,” said Keeper.
“What must we do?” said Brun.
“We,” said Keeper’s voice, “have been brewing a rebellion, for many, many years now. Many. And now… The time has come. Each of you must go a different way. Each night, when the humans are asleep, and Goblintown is alive with the children of the gods, you will go, and become a part of this brewing rebellion. There is a person each of you is going to meet tonight.”
Keeper’s floating eye-slits gave each of them their orders…
They would all go to meet the goblin tailor, Tha’sung.
Ul’druk would then go to the Shallowshore Dockmaster, Feth’faj’j, while Nal’kuth’ra went to meet Thae’krj, the Tinker.
“And what of the ape?” grunted Ul’druk, nodding to Kaye. “How shall he help the rebellion?”
“Oh,” chuckled Keeper. “He won’t be of much use to you, I’m afraid. Just be kind to him. His road is long, and not an easy one, to say the least. He’ll be here, until the drugs get to him, and then he’ll go. Ul’druk will be cruel to him, and be assured… you’ll pay for it.”
Brun looked to Ul’druk to read his reaction, but the big orc merely shrugged as if to say, “I don’t care.” Brun thought he knew better, until he saw Ul’druk’s apathy, naked on his face.
“And Pa’ka?” said Nal’kuth’ra.
Pa’ka was still sleeping.
“Where is he going tonight?”
Keeper reappeared in the room full of clay story scrolls. He wasn’t looking at any of them, but perusing the crates, as if looking for a particular story.
“He’s not going anywhere tonight,” said Keeper. “The rebellion will not be called ‘Pa’ka’s Rebellion,’ I’ll just put it that way. Oh! I nearly forgot. Don’t let your tusks be seen.”
Brun nodded. “Right, right.”
“Why?” asked Nal’kuth’ra.
“I’m afraid they kill orcs here,” said Keeper, leaning forward to inspect a particular scroll. Then, he looked over at Brun, rather than Nal’kuth’ra. “But! If you keep your tusks hidden, Goblintown is safe.”
Then the eyes were floating, and grinning, and then they were gone as his voice echoed on.
“More or less…”
* * * * / * * * *
Link to Orcish-English Dictionary
Wanna hear the music of NALA SAGA?
* * * * / * * * *
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