Knights of Alchemy

by Feonyx

Chapter thirteen, concerning narrow-minded shamans (or shamen, if you're Meg) and a fight unlike any the Knights have so far had to face, though there's still always the chance that they'll be found out and die. Oh, for the knightly life.

3. The Road To Kibombo

Knights of Alchemy

Chapter Three: The Road To Kibombo

                Meg's home was a small cave, perhaps twenty feet off the ground, and if not for the heavy rain that was slowly turning the canyon into a river, Zak probably would have given the broken stone 'stairs' a miss. Instead, with Cata's help, he slowly clambered up the heap while Meg and Cian saw to Elys inside, having gone ahead to get her out of the rain.

                "What are you three –four," Meg corrected herself, remembering the strange horse, "doing in the Kandorean Cliffs? Especially with a storm coming?   It's been brewing for more than a day, don't tell me you were caught off guard."
                "We had hoped to reach the other side before it struck," Cian replied, gently producing pure water to clean the worst gash from the Little Death. "We came from Daila, searching for a thief and hoping to ask the Kibombo for help."
                "Oh yes, the Kibombo and their legendary border guard," said Meg, from the back of the cave. Though the first several feet in from the mouth were bare, Meg had put together an interesting home in the back, and hanging over what was probably a bed was a bag full of a dozen or more kinds of plants.  She had untied it from the tiny crag and was looking through the many herbs. "Are Little Deaths poisonous?"
                "You don't know?" said Cian, surprised. He would have expected someone as clearly wild as Meg to know every secret of the many beasts in the surrounding land.
                "I've never been hit by one," she answered with a slight grin.
                "I don't think they are, no," replied the Lemurian. "In any case, I could   handle poison."
                "Does it look infected?"
                "Not yet, but it's very recent."
                "Can you handle infections?"
                "…Not that I know of."
                "Uh-huh," said Meg, as though she expected the answer. The huntress picked a few broad leaves and a large toxic-orange berry from the many plants.
                "You do what you can, o mighty healer, and I'll handle everything else."
                "You don't like healers?" asked Cian, conversationally, as he began casting Ply Psynergy.
                "I've no special love for Lemurians. You're all so… civilized," she said, the last word touched by sarcasm. "It's no wonder the senate wants to seal the island. I'm surprised you've let the rest of the backwards world even walk on your sacred ground this long." After a long moment of shredding the
leaves in a rough mortar and picking up a pestle to mash in the berry, she looked up at Cian. "No reply?"
                "You're entitled to your opinion," he explained, engrossed in his work.
                "How civilized," said Meg, but this time it was more like a joke, without venom.
                Sounds of a struggle being decided came from just outside the cave, and Cata rose into view, Zak just behind her. The horse, exhausted and ducking, scrambled into the too-low haven and lay down to rest. Cata didn't look so relaxed, though 'relaxed' would be a difficult word to attach to the dripping horse, too.
                "All right, prove it," Cata demanded.              
                "What?" asked Cian and Meg in unison.
                "You. 'Meg'."

                "Prove what?"
                Cata paused for a moment, as though it should be obvious, and then thought again. "I don't know!" she said at last. "Anything! Everything! Prove we're safe here, firstly!"
                "You don't trust me?" asked Meg, innocently mixing her salve.
                "I'd have to be pretty foolish to trust anyone who has stories about being half-orc and blood-drinking told about her. You're telling me those are totally unfounded?" asked Cata.

                "I'm telling you that villagers with kids who won't shut up sometimes take something they know very little about and make it scary, on the off chance the brats'll be terrified into a moment of quiet," said Meg, making it very clear who she meant.

                "And that's supposed to make me trust you?" asked Cata, not particularly swayed but quite insulted. Meg sighed.

                "No, I don't suppose you're the type to listen to reason," the huntress muttered, and held out a hand. Cata looked at it sceptically, thinking Meg was trying to make a gesture of truce. A moment later, though, with a flicker of purple light, the elemental that had felled the Little Death and saved Cian appeared. It was a Djinni.
                "That's a Djinni!" exclaimed Cata, knowing the strange, powerful creature from the legends told by all Adepts around Weyard. Meg looked amused.  Djinn, the servants of the Elemental Spirits, would never ally themselves with someone not on the side of justice.
                "Squall, Djinni of Jupiter, at your service," said the Djinni, inclining her head and extending her wings to either side in a sort of Djinni bow-curtsey. "Do stop maligning Meg, she's got a rough enough time as it is."
                "Oh really?" Cata looked at the twin swords now resting against the back wall. "What sort of suicidal creature would cause trouble for anyone with those things?"
                "They don't. I bother them, because even civilized people deserve help when they're in danger. The Kandorean Cliffs are dangerous, but people often pass through, and I hunt monsters to keep everyone else safe," said Meg.
                "And you've got the whole issue with cities," said Squall, when no one spoke up.
                "Quiet, Squall," snapped Meg.
                "How did you get a Djinni, anyway?" asked Cata, more trusting after Squall's appearance.
                "Djinn are not acquired," said Squall, and there was a sort of not-serious injured pride to her tone. "We select worthy individuals and join with them to further the struggle of good against corruption and savagery."
                "Are all Djinn this bad?" Meg laughed at the Dailan girl's question.
                "You'd get used to it," she replied. "After so many years, all I hear is a faint humming."
                "A mere sixteen years," said Squall. "I still rue the day I saved you from that Flash Ant." The Jupiter Djinni turned to Cian. "She looked so harmless at the time, I swear it."
                The Lemurian took little notice, still busy mending Elys' wounds. "I really should have kept up my healing skills," he muttered, and looked up at Meg. "I hope whatever you're mixing over there can handle blood loss, because I forget how."
                "As a matter of fact, it can," said Meg. "Though I suppose if you can     figure out how to close those injuries afterwards, that would be some help." The huntress joined Cian by Elys, who still had not awoken, and whatever they started doing made Cata's stomach reach a state to which 'rotations per minute' was applicable. She turned away and moved to the cave's edge, in the hopes that the storm might be abating.
                That wasn't likely, of course, and a quick glance at the raging river that had been the valley pass told Cata they weren't leaving any time soon. She sighed, resigned, and returned to the back of the cave, where there was an invitingly thick mat. With her pack as a pillow, Cata lay down to rest, and was asleep in moments.

                "I had better go with you for now," Meg announced the following morning, once everyone was better rested.  "The way you three-"

                "Four," Zak corrected, but he was long used to such oversights.

                "-Four attract monsters, it'll be faster to go with you than scout the area.  There might not be a Wolfkin this side of the Cliffs before the day is out."

                "Only if you're sure you want to," said Cian.  He was packing away the various healing items and equipment from the previous night.  Their usefulness was proven, though, since Elys was conscious, upright, and speaking.

                "I wonder if Jastyx got to high ground," Cata said to herself.

                "I hope so," said Elys, who overheard her friend.  Cata turned, looking stricken.  "Well, I don't want to have to go searching for the Tear in these rocks.  Or worse, check a corpse."

                "Looks like your techniques were more effective than we had hoped," Meg commented to Cian, nodding at Elys, who was obviously recovered from the previous night.

                "You mean 'more than we could have hoped'," the Lemurian said, but he wasn't sure.

                "Not if she intends to keep going on about corpse-searching," Meg replied, and Cian nodded.

                "Aside from beating the hell out of any monsters we happen to stumble across, d'you think you can help us out somehow?" asked Elys.

                "Actually," said Meg, "I do happen to know of a shortcut through the Naribwe Ridge."

                "Shortcuts are not what I had in mind," Elys responded.

                "We should take what we can get," Cata pointed out.

                "I just don't think shortcuts are a good idea.  They always go wrong.  Especially for new adventurers.  You've got to agree with that much, Cata."

                "Ah, but Cian's not new," she pointed out.

                "He's not the leader," Elys countered.

                "Ha!  That's right.  I am.  And we'll follow Meg."

                "I should have known a Jupiter Djinni would lead to hero-worship," Elys muttered, turning away.  She hadn't expect to change her friend's mind anyway, but something felt wrong on a very basic level about taking a perfectly safe shortcut led by a local huntress.

                The guards at the gates of Naribwe, capital city of the Narib region, were often bored.  The entire province was filled with philosophers, and this was the main reason no one ever attacked.  Philosophers don't make many enemies.  When they do, they don't last long, because one topic guaranteed to inspire genius in a philosopher is their own personal safety.

                Just behind the walls of the northwest gate were cantilever contraptions capable of hurling caltrops with four-foot spikes nearly two hundred feet beyond the city walls.  At every guard tower was a Psynergy stone built into a philosophical device that could manipulate Venus Psynergy no matter the user's element, creating sinkholes anywhere around the city walls.

                Naribwe tended to be peaceful, though.  It had always been humble, right back to its ancient roots as a simple village or two.  They had never attacked another city in their long existence, had a generally accepted and uncorrupted government, and welcomed anyone not actively brandishing weapons and screaming battle cries.

                So the guards were almost always bored.  The job attracted quiet people who liked to stand and think for hours on end, interspersed with the occasional traveller of some sort.  The one flaw was that even thoughtful types like a bit of action now and then.  This was bad timing for Meg's first visit to a city in years.

                A clicking, slamming rumble moved through the trees on the nearest mountainside, shaking trees and crushing some of the smaller underbrush.  Eventually it stopped, the dislodged boulders having crashed to a rest, and Cata emerged from the trees.  She was battered, dusty, scratched, and so dishevelled that the word was coming to the minds of people who didn't even know it.  Elys, looking somewhat better, was close behind.

                "I probably could have predicted that," said Elys.  "And I'm not even Jupiter-aligned."

                "Shut," Cata gasped fiercely, and after a moment she added "Up."

                "Well, it's only logical, isn't it?  The inexperienced adventurers have a hell of a time taking the shortcut, and the ones who know what they're doing amble by in perfect calm and safety.  Speaking of which, do you think we left them by the unstable waterfall, or the rockslide?" asked Elys conversationally, looking back up the slope.

                "The rockslide," Zak replied, stumbling slightly as he emerged from the trees.  "And thanks for your concern, but it's really not necessary," he added, sarcastically.

                "Are you all right?" called one of the guards, guardedly.  The girls noticed them for the first time.  Zak contented himself with wandering over the river for a drink and pretending he didn't know them.  Humans caused most of their own problems.

                "No!" Cata replied, with a touch of 'who could look like this and be all right' sarcasm.  Unfortunately, due to common Narib mythology, this was exactly the wrong time for Meg to catch up, along with Cian.  Naturally, she did, and a few moments of uncertainty followed while the three guards looked at each other, none quite wanting to say it first.

                "Megraghgah!" one shouted at last.

                "Looks like it's not just Daila, then," said Cata, as the guards approached.

                "You don't sound worried," Meg commented, hands edging to her swords.

                "Not with a Jupiter Djinni on our side," Cata replied.  But when she noticed that the incoming guards were all carrying pikes with rather philosophical blades, and carrying them like people who wouldn't be unhappy to use them in the near future, she did begin to wonder.

                The guards stopped, at the captain's signal, about ten feet away.  "Release your captives, beast," he commanded.  Meg did nothing except a slight twitch in the direction of a smile.  "You would do well to take us seriously, savage.  Though your appearance be fair, we know the twin claws and bloody eyes of terrible Megraghgah well enough."

                "Claws?" mumbled Elys.  "You people really pay attention to ghost stories, don't you?"

Cata leaned over and studied Meg's face more closely.  "Well… I guess, if you wanted to, you could say her eyes were a sort of dry blood colour.  But it's a pretty disgusting way to put it."

                "Fear not, young lady, you shall be protected from this demoness," said a guard, whose grip on his pike was wavering more than slightly.

                "Oh, that's it," Cata stated, taking 'young lady' as an insult to her knightly aspirations.  "She's not a half-orc, you half-wit!  And we're not prisoners!"

                "…You aren't?" repeated the captain.

                "Anti-Forced Speech Act of 1259, sir," said a lieutenant, quietly.  "In a situation involving hostile Adepts, no testimony is to be taken from hostages, in case Psynergy is being used to induce-"

                "Mars Adepts are about as good at controlling other people as the ambassador here is at fireballs," said Meg, gesturing at Cian.

                "Ambassador?" repeated the captain.

                "It's a joke, I'm not-" Cian began.

                "He's Lemurian," a guard realised.

                "The Lemurian ambassador has been taken hostage by a half-orc?!" exclaimed the captain.

                "Will you people just be quiet and listen for a moment?" demanded Squall, appearing on Meg's shoulder.  The guards leapt back, dropped their weapons, and scrambled to pick them up again.

                "It's a Djinni!" more than one of them shouted.

                "Squall, that wasn't great timing," said Cata.

                "Bah.  I'm sure that we can sort this all out easily enough," Squall replied.

                As judges went, this one looked exceptionally severe.  The Hall of Justice wasn't exactly a friendly place to begin with; it felt more like a well-lit tomb than anything else.  But with this judge at the front of the room, and all the quiet onlookers surrounding her, Meg was prepared to believe that at one word, it would soon become her personal tomb.

                "That's it.  Really," said Cata, glaring at the guard who had starting jabbering about Acts at the gates.  "Not a half-orc, not an ambassador, not hostages.  We were just hoping to rest here, maybe get a few more horses for the road to Kibombo."

                "We've already-" began Cata, but then she looked back to Elys.  "Zak slipped away, didn't he?"

                "Maybe he was the smart one," Elys said, quietly.

                "There's another of you in the city?" demanded the judge.

                "No, Zak's a horse, and probably outside the city."

                "And what about it?" asked the judge, pointing at Squall.

                "She, you robed plebeian," replied Squall.  Then she added, less quietly than would have been best, "I always thought that having so many Venus Adepts in one city was dangerous.  They go and write laws down.  And then follow them to the letter, like it's somehow important."

                The judge had turned red, an uncommon colour for a Venus Adept, and he slapped his palm in the place where a non-Adept judge might have had a gavel.  A fracture ran down through the bench and the floor rippled.  The audience might have jumped at the sound, or they might have simply been thrown by the extra force of the judge's Quake Psynergy.

                "Enough!" he shouted.  "I deem you unworthy of this Hall and sentence you to trial by symposium.  You will be taken to the South Hall of Philosophers, and they shall decide the best course of action to take with you, 'Meg' of Kandorean.  You will be allowed to argue your case as well as you can, but do not expect leniency.  The people of Narib know much of you and the things you have done."

                "Apparently not," Squall shot back, but she chose not to electrocute anyone as the guards led Meg to the 'symposium', whatever on Weyard that was.  Cata, Elys, and Cian were told to wait outside by guards carrying extremely philosophical weaponry, and so had little choice but to wait while Meg faced Naribwe justice.

                "This's a symposium, huh?" said Squall as the doors closed behind them.  The South Hall of Philosophers, between the large pillars that were interspersed throughout, was filled with people all dressed in roughly the same way, involving white robes and, if there was any hair at all, a beard that suggested the person had been caught in the midst of eating a sheep.

                "Djinni of Jupiter!" one called.

                "Venus help me," muttered another.  "Ibsilon, what's the word?"

                "We're supposed to be judging her, according to Judge Griphis," called one of the many philosophers.  He stood by the door, reading a parchment delivered by a soldier.  "'Parently he got a bit testy in the court.  …Um… any of you know what 'Megraghgah' means?"

                "That's probably me," Meg volunteered.

                "Doesn't look half-orc to me," said a voice in the robed crowd.

                "Got the eyes," said another.

                "Lots of Mars Adepts have reddish eyes."

                "Verden, you freak me out.  First 'what's so beautiful about truth', now divining the elements of strangers.  Jupiter Adepts simply were never meant to be philosophers.  You can figure out a counter-argument before the other fellow's finished deciding what his first point is."

                "All right, what's so bad about you that made Griphis get all snippy?" asked Ibsilon, rolling up the parchment and pocketing it.  "Probably not the usual sort of offence.  You don't even look Naribi, really."

                "I might have been.  A very long time ago," Meg replied.

                "Where are you from, then?" asked the same man who had asked for the protection of the Venus Spirit earlier.  Meg turned and fixed on hi the sort of stare that would make butter melt out of sheer intimidation.

                "The wilds," she replied.

                "What, like nomadic?  Tribal sort of people?"

                "No, just me.  And Squall.  We live in the Kandorean Cliffs and keep ingrates like you out of trouble with monsters," she snapped.

                "And occasionally drink blood," said someone who had been smart enough to take the precaution of standing in the back, behind a pillar.

                "You dislike us, but protect us-" began Ibsilon.

                "No, I like people and hate cities," Meg corrected him.

                "Interesting philosophy," said Verden, Really Freaky Philosopher of Jupiter.  "Tell me more about your weltanschauung."

                "That's no way to talk to a lady," snapped Ibsilon.

                "And if you do it again, your weltanschauung is probably the first thing her swords are going to aim for," said another.

                "It means 'world view', you idiots," said Meg, who hadn't looked offended.  "It's old Attekan."

                "She's good," said Verden appraisingly.  "Anyway, keep talking.  We are supposed to be judging you, after all."

                Meg glared at him, but in the end, had little choice except to talk.  She didn't doubt that they would wait for a very long time, and in any case, that thief was just going to get farther ahead the longer they were stuck in Naribwe.

                If Cian had any sense, he'd be getting the girls and the horse back on the road already, but she suspected that such sense was short among Lemurians.  They had sealed and reopened the island so many times over the centuries (from what Meg remembered of what she had been taught before leaving the city she was born in) that a few Kibombo tribes were said to use it to mark the passing of ages, like the world's slowest clock.

                In short, the chances were about ten in ten that he was still dutifully waiting outside, not wanting to abandon Meg after she had saved them so recently.  Well, then.  Best not to disappoint.

                "The problem with cities," Meg began, "is that they warp the mind and dull the sixth sense.  That'd be common sense, in case you were wondering.  Cities are built, taking the land and shaping it into what people think is the best place for them to live.  But you box yourselves in with roads and walls and houses, and soon you're all thinking in straight lines, no diversion to one side or the other, and above all never up.  You don't appreciate orders and cycles that you can't always see every part of.  Nature, on the other hand, is the greatest of all cities, one in which all creatures are not equal, but unequal in ways that cancel out.  You yourselves, great thinkers to a man -and I might add that the quality of thought that comes out of this place might be improved with the addition of a woman or two, just a thought- are still answerable to this judge who lost his temper just because I turned out to not be a monstrous abomination, but instead just someone who doesn't much like people like him.  In the wild, you would be masters, finding solutions and advantages, and he would listen to you, because he couldn't.  Instead, you find yourselves submissive, because this is a city, where the people who manipulate the best rise to power.  Trees and stones and Wolfkin cannot be intimidated or manipulated.  And the wilds have their own souls, I assure you.  Beyond the walls of the city, the world lives and breathes, lives, dies, and is born again, a hundred thousand cycles and order to the world that you have shut out because it's all too much to control.  I don't control.  I am a part of it and nothing more.  But in the same, I am nothing less."

                She went on.

                Nearly an hour after the doors had closed in Cata's face, she was still sitting in the sun against the wall, waiting for something to happen and wondering if Meg was even going to get out alive.  Elys was pacing up and down the street, which was dusted in such fine sand that she looked more like she was gliding on a small cloud, and Cian had gone to find Zak.

                Heralded by a rhythm of clopping hooves, the Lemurian appeared around the corner of a nearby sidestreet, horse in tow.  Zak was apparently in his favourite mode, 'I-told-you-so'.

                "It's not like it was unexpected.  Bringing Meg into the city?  I could have told you this would happen.  Tell you one thing, you'll never find horses turning against an unfamiliar horse just because they've heard stories about him."

                "Horses rarely tell stories.  Most of them aren't capable of it," Cian pointed out, waving to Cata and Elys.

                "Even those who can't wouldn't, no matter the circumstance," Zak insisted.

                "I'm going to restock your saddlebags with spare horseshoes if you don't shut up."

                "Oh yes.  Dumb animal, won't understand anything but threats, can't be reasoned with-"

                "Lead ones."  Zak was silent.  "Anything?" he asked, approaching the symposium hall.

                "Other than some fine pacing demonstrations, no," Cata replied.  But, in convenient literary tradition, the hall's massive wooden doors creaked open a bit at that moment.  A moment later, Ibsilon fell out, looked absolutely exhausted and generally shaken.  He pulled himself upright, using Cian as a support all the way, and then grabbed him by the collar.

                "Innocent.  Completely innocent," he reported, eyes wild and hair wilder.  "She is welcome, in fact encouraged to leave, and you will be supplied with horses for the remaining leg of your journey to the Kibombo border.  Just make sure she stays with you, all right?  She's not to come back to Naribwe.  Ever.  Ever, do you hear me?"

                "Yes," Cian assured him, removing the philosopher gently but forcefully.  "Where is she?"

                "Right here," said Meg, opening the door the rest of the way (another philosopher, his support removed, toppled onto the steps leading to the hall's entrance).

                "What happened?" asked Elys.

                "A spirited debate on the morality and psychology inherent to city life," Meg reported.

                "Any casualties?" asked Cata, thinking she knew what Meg meant.

                "I'm really rather surprised that these are the best thinkers they've got.  Most of them lost their voices after twenty minutes," said Meg, looking back at the prone figure on the steps.

                "More of shock than exhaustion," Ibsilon muttered.

                "Best be moving on," said Meg.  She waved a scroll.  "We're supposed to take this to the city stable yards.  Very fast horses, I'm assured."  The five travellers headed off down the street; they had passed the stable yards on the way from the Hall of Justice.

                "The woman could incite a hive of bees to rebel against the queen," Ibsilon muttered.  And as they turned down another street, he had the strangest feeling that he had just been part of a story that would spread across the world.  It was an odd one, but it passed soon enough, and he went back inside, looking for someone to argue aesthetics with.  Something nice and safe and not at all to do with living in caves.

                The horses were fast, true to the Naribian's word.  Zak didn't much like travelling with other horses who didn't speak, but while the miles were pounded behind them, crossing the plains between the Narib region and Kibombo territory, he forgot about conversation anyway.  They were nearly finished.  As soon as a single Kibombo guard had been told, the drumsong would echo from Tear River to the edge of the Great Eastern Sea, and all the border would be on guard.  The Kibombo liked Daila.  It was quiet, didn't try to invade them, and were often generous with their harvest, in the interests of keeping those things mutual.  Jastyx didn't have a chance of crossing the alerted border.

                But Zak, as has already been shown, tends to be cynical about these things.  He knows that rarely is anything as simple as it seems.  Life isn't neat.  So he wasn't too surprised, when Naribwe was hours behind them and the mountains were close, to see that the guards were more active than most sentries.  Something was Up.  Drums were sounding in the distance.

                "Not more of you people," said an exasperated guard, his Kibombo accent thick but easy to understand.  "It is not yet trading season.  The border is closed to all uninvited outsiders."

                "What do you mean by 'more'?" demanded Cata.

                "Drumbeat," replied the guard, and gestured to the east.  "Someone was trying to get through the mountains at Spearshaft Pass.  She was turned away, naturally."  The five travellers breathed a uniform sigh of relief.  Then the drums picked up, a rapid sequence that seemed to startle the Kibombo.

                "A struggle," the guard translated.  "Rarely do people dare to test the strength of the mighty Kibombo.  We shall have a new example for all those who would…"  The guard trailed off, and they noticed that the drums had stopped, too.

                "What is it?" asked Meg.

                "It was saying 'three have been felled'.  But the last word was unfinished…" said the guard, a look of controlled horror on his face.  "The border has been breached…  How could anyone…?"

                Cata, Elys, and Cian, who had fought Jastyx only a day ago, were well aware of how someone, Jastyx in particular, could.  Most of the answers involved rocks and a large, ghostly scythe.

                "We are pursuing the very intruder who has just now entered your territory.  Let us through and she will be caught and removed from Kibombo, you have my word," said Cian.

                "She?" repeated the guard, adjusting his headdress in what he apparently believed was a manly way.  "You would have me believe that a woman has defeated…"  He suddenly noticed the looks that he was getting from three of the foreign riders, and suddenly found that he could believe it.

                He reached into a pouch and removed a reddish stone disk with an intricately notched design and rough green string threaded in the centre.  "Take this.  You have four days safe passage through Kibombo.  After that, you will be asked to leave.  After you are asked to leave, you will leave. If you do not leave, your body will leave, and your newly freed spirit can do what it pleases."

                "The generosity of the Kibombo is always appreciated," said Cian, bowing slightly and passing the disk to Cata.  They rode into the mountains.

[Author's Notes] This chapter is later than it should have been.  You don't want to know why, I assure you.  It involves the demons that live in hard drives.  Anyway, I give credit to the muse, a continuing source of inspiration and motivation, and have reserved a special quantity of credit for anyone who hits that little review button down there.  Next chapter should be 'soon', but we all know what that means.