The Road To Kalbakar, Wyrms of Pasandir #1

CHAPTER 14 - CONFRONTATION AT A CAMP (Part 3)

'Gods,' he whispered. 'What am I to do? Father and Mother dead, Hornal gone, and now good Thar.'

'How is your position here?' Kellani said briskly.

Mazuun cursed. 'Static. We can't attack them and they don't attack us. The gods know what they're doing in our keep.' He lifted helpless hands. 'We can't get inside. There's an invisible something blocking the road to the gates.'

'A shield?' Kellani said. 'Only on the road?'

'We tried climbing the sides of the mountain,' Mazuun said. 'The something is still there.'

'That something; did it feel like this?' Kellani activated her own shield.

'Like what?' Mazuun said.

He wasn't used to magic and wouldn't recognize the faint shimmer around the broomer.

'Touch her,' I said.

Gingerly, he stretched out a hand and met the invisible barrier. He snatched his arm back as if he'd been bitten.

'God of the Mountains,' he said, shaken. 'Exactly the same.'

'Then it's no use trying it from above,' she said. 'Those shields cover all sides.'

'Is there a way to pierce it?' I said.

Kellani grimaced. 'Dear gods, no! Nothing short of knocking you out can disrupt a shield – and you can't get knocked out while you wear it.' She stared up at the keep, high above us. 'They must need provisions. Would they have a portal, Lord Mazuun?'

The young lord frowned. 'A portal to what, lady?'

'To other places,' she said. 'One steps through a portal and ends up at a destination many miles away.'

Mazuun's face was blank. 'It sounds like a bard's tale. Does such a thing really exist?'

I grinned. 'The world is filled with wonders, friend. But I get that the keep doesn't have one.'

'Then how are they supplied?' Kellani said.

'By caravan,' Mazuun said. 'Once a month, on the same day, four monks and an ox-drawn cart from the monastery go to the keep. They walk through the barrier as if it doesn't exist and enter the keep.'

The young lord spoke innocently, but one word froze my heart, filling me with dark memories of my family in an icy cave, whispering, terrified.

'Monastery,' I said slowly. 'What is this thing?'

'The Tur Nuryan monastery,' Mazuun said. 'Our most holy building; home to the Kavid Jar, Spirit of the Mountains. He is a young man, filled with the wisdom of all those who went before him; our guide to the heart of Bodrus, the God of the Mountains.' He clenched his fists. 'The monastery is where the trouble began.' He dragged an older man to the fore. 'You were there; tell them.'

The old warrior was gaunt, with swollen knuckles and a toothless mouth. His eyes were clear, though, and filled with an immeasurable sadness. 'I was there, yes.' His voice was so soft I had to strain to hear him.

'I was a Tur Nuryan lay worker. For over thirty years, I had served the Kavid Jar, until his death of old age. For though he ages half as fast as common men, every Kavid Jar's body dies, as do all of us. Then a new Spirit will take his place from among the child acolytes. The Sleeping God, Bodrus of the Mountains, transfers the knowledge of the old body into the new, and thus our guidance continued uninterrupted for a thousand years.'

The Sleeping God is Bodrus? I thought, thinking of what Jem had said about her grandfather, that day in the crypt. A sleeping god and power to be grabbed. The lich is here, at this monastery?