Parr Taken: The Second Neoluzian War: Book I

Parr Taken The Second Neoluzian War: Book I

All Rights Reserved © 2002 by Christopher J. Farmer

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

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Cover art by Lori J. Shepard

Any resemblance to actual people and events is purely coincidental.

This is a work of fiction.

ISBN: 0-595-22136-X

ISBN: 978-0-5957-2859-6 (eBook)

Contents

The Cleansing

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

About the Author

Neoluzian Terms

This book is for Caroline Dinegar, Natalie Ferringer, James Dull, Joshua Sandman and Jock McClellan

The Cleansing  

Christopher J. Farmer

When you think of justice,

Or after think of fate,

Be careful not to trust us,

Expanding all to hate.

Ignore a moment’s evasive love,

Found safely under awning,

No faith sought in the morning dove,

Your life is one of pawning.

The love you lost but tried to hold,

A truth that seats like thunder,

Fester over the obligations sold,

To ripen them for plunder.

Do the bidding as we take,

In power unrestrained,

Objective of a world to shake,

Nothing shall be feigned.

So when you see them taken,

And say the cause is just,

It is they who are forsaken,

To feed the denial lust.

Marching there while in the land,

No change can be a whisper,

When you’re dealt a fatal hand,

Our arrangements surely blister.

As it ends and through the night,

The screams no longer fashion,

Remember that a glory fight,

Bubbles false and shallow passion.

There were sutars of soldiers on the battlefield that day, weary from cycles of war. Many had wounds from previous battles—eye-patches where their eyes were lost, missing fingers, scars so deep that only their courage allowed them the strength for another major offensive.

Irongloat the Merciless returned to the gap in the Spardune Valley to repel the humans and the other races that gathered there. Irongloat the Merciless knew that this battle could be the final step to Orc victory over lower Neoluzia.

As the armies of humans learned that Irongloat the Merciless was soon to engage them with his personal army, a terrible fear ensued through the ranks. General Yugon was cast down by Irongloat the Merciless just two moons prior to this new knowledge. Men ran from the front, leaving their weapons where they lay. Other races ran as well and the despair reached a feverish pitch. The morale of the world fell to the ground.

In the distance of the field, a tarin away from the front, a wizard appeared there. The men knew of him. They had heard of his exploits, but this was the first time he had fought here. He was known to all as Darius. As the men fled the field, he remained. He remained because there was no one else to remain. Darius remained there as the other soldiers fled the ranks for the next two moons.

Darius met Irongloat the Merciless in the valley on the third moon, and by his side stood Termaplix, Darius’ brother. There were rumors about Termaplix—that something had befallen him—but this could not be confirmed with speed.

The first engagement with Irongloat the Merciless raised the spirits of the men that held their ground. Darius and Termaplix did not falter. When all appeared lost, the two wizards remained. The soldiers returned to the field with a new spirit and a hope that was withheld from them for so long.

There can be no denying the true courage of Darius and Termaplix that overshadowed all others in the field during that battle. As the humans and dwarves and elves ran, Darius and Termaplix cast down Irongloat the Merciless, and when this happened the hope of the world was restored and the wounded returned to the field. The wounded shed tears for the two wizards that saved Neoluzia. That included everyone.

—From the diary of King Isaih, Neoluzia 14, permanently archived in secret at the Salon of Enlightenment.

The Arch of Despair, Neoluzia, 553

Fordal was an ordinary Orc, and because he was ordinary his contributions to the world should have been the same as the sutars of other Orcs with whom he shared his shoddy existence. Orcs would hunt together, they would fight together and cause localized mischief at times, but they were not bestowed with the intelligence to organize and build those things that a true civilization requires. Orcs came and went in their territory expounding their energies on those tasks that met their basic daily needs for survival and little else. They communicated with each other only over the most trivial and shortsighted situations, albeit to eat, to mate, to destroy. They were territorial creatures, the Orcs, but their territory was derived from their attraction to a specific place and once that place was found, they rarely yearned for more. They were not very smart creatures but they were strong and could be very dangerous if confronted in the limited areas in which they still existed.

At the end of the War of Cleansing, the Orcs and their allies were scattered throughout the vast expanses of the Arch of Despair. Antiluminous, the leader and all-powerful king of the evil armies that marched against Neoluzia during the war had managed to control his sutars of minions with magical power. The Orcs were specifically a challenge because of their incredible stupidity and the other dark minions were no less as uncontrollable because they were equally challenged. Antiluminous created generals who issued stones of possession to captains and captains passed them along to their underlings and so forth. The stones of possession increased the intelligence of the creature that wore them, allowing Antiluminous the tools to organize and use the vast resources of the Orcs and other creatures unsuited for independent organization in warfare.

In Neoluzia 15, the Neoluzian Council issued an ultimatum that all magical items in the possession of the Orcs, their minions and every other race that operated against the good races in Neoluzia be destroyed, buried or confiscated. The items that were to be buried were to be done so without markers, so that their retrieval was forever impossible and their properties could never again pose a threat to the other races of the land. Many magical items were confiscated—spells, magic books, magic weapons, magic stones, gate stones—and returned to the ground or destroyed. Others were kept by the Neoluzian Council for safekeeping in the Salon of Enlightenment, the fortress that was the center of defense for the good races during the War of Cleansing. The order to confiscate magical items by the Neoluzian Council stressed the location and destruction of the stones of possession because the stones of possession were magical stones that facilitated the Orcs intelligence. This new intelligence led to their organization, a condition during the War of Cleansing that allowed the Orcs to ravage the land. Orcs by themselves did not pose a grave threat to anyone because they remained in their limited areas, and the good races that stayed away from those areas ensured that the Orcs would never have the ambition to conquer again. The stones of possession were confiscated by the hundreds of sutars, destroyed, buried or taken away by the armies of good back to the Salon of Enlightenment.

The conscripted armies under the command of the Salon of Enlightenment did their best to reign in all the major magic powers of the world, and they were very effective at preventing the evil Orcs from reacquiring them. However, as with all wars, the instruments of war and their appendages can be almost impossible to control and to confiscate. It takes just one incident to rekindle the machines of war. In the case of Fordal the Orc, it would be he that would restart the fires of war and conflict in a land where open warfare had become but a small, distant memory of the past, a period of legend and of heroes and battles long since forgotten. Neoluzia had, for the centuries that followed the War of Cleansing, become a community of races that learned to live with one another, respect each other and find the common good.

Fordal the Orc’s story was the story of an ordinary Orc who chanced upon a change that exposed him to unfamiliar desires and traits. He was a small Orc, not very bright as Orcs go, and other Orcs in his tribe took advantage of him because he was small and not very bright. For cycles Fordal would be subjected to harassment and intimidation by his Orc counterparts not because his counterparts deliberately harassed him, but because he was not intelligent enough to end the harassment. Fordal would tag along with the other Orcs and would not be dismayed by his tribe because Orcs were incapable of holding such thoughts for long. Fordal liked to eat, and being hungry is the worst possible condition for an Orc besides being killed by another Orc over a mindless situation or slight. The tribe tolerated Fordal as they tolerated all the other Orcs they grouped with, and Fordal tolerated them.

One day while the Orcs in Fordal’s small tribe were hunting wild boar in the Arch of Despair, Fordal chanced upon a small cave high in the mountains. He could hear his band of fellow hunters screaming and yelling at each other in the distance. Fordal knew they were nearby and he turned from the cave briefly because the distraction of the cave only lasted moments in his limited mind. He was hungry and he knew that his group would get something to eat very soon. Fordal wanted to be there with the party when they ate because if he weren’t there they would eat everything and save him nothing. As he walked from the cave with food on his mind, a new thought, a surprising thought came to him. For the first time in his life, Fordal thought about something that surpassed his thoughts about food.

Fordal thought about the cave again a second time. Such was the strangeness of the attraction to the impulse in his mind the scrawny Orc paused to think about the new feeling. He turned back to the entrance of the cave and moved to the opening, the feelings of hunger dissipating and being replaced by feelings of curiosity—a new, strange thought.

The entrance to the cave was small and narrow. It was an entrance that could not be seen unless directly chanced upon. Fordal lowered his small frame and peered inside. The new thoughts in his mind demanded it. He crawled through the opening for a time and then found that he could stand as he was deeper into the cave, his eyes adjusting to the darkness since he was born with the natural ability to have infrared vision, or night-sight, as all Orcs had. Within moments he was able to see clearly in the cave.

About fifteen feet away, Fordal could see a figure sitting on the floor of the cave leaning against the wall. The sudden realization that he was not alone startled him at first and he turned to look back at the entrance of the cave with thoughts of flight. Something held him and forced him to stay—some mystical force. Fordal turned slowly back at the figure on the ground while remaining very still. The figure did not move. Fordal picked up a small rock, threw it at the figure and then crouched at the opening of the cave to run quickly, but again the figure did not move. With this new information flowing through his mind, Fordal slowly stepped closer to the figure to investigate, something he would have never done an hour before or even a moon before. The new thoughts, the mysterious thoughts that entered his mind demanded him to move forward, to come closer.

On the floor was the skeleton of an Orc, an ancient skeleton in full armor. This shocked Fordal so much that he cried out in surprise and fear because never before had he ever seen an Orc in armor. The skeleton wore a full suit of armor and a shiny steel helmet sat upon its polished skull. A skeletal hand held an arrow that had penetrated the armor in the midsection, a fatal blow from a battle long since fought. Fordal touched the hand and it did not move. He removed the skeletal hand from the shaft of the feathered arrow and pulled the arrow from the armor and examined it. The steel arrow had serrated edges and it was very sharp. His tribe used arrows to hunt with but no arrow that the Orcs had created looked anything like the sparkling arrow that he now held in his hand. Fordal admired the beauty of the arrow and he tucked it away under his leather tunic. It was then that something else caught his eye.

Around the neck of the slain Orc was a necklace, a simple necklace made from leather with a small metal hitch in the center that held an encased stone. The stone did not appear to be anything particularly beautiful, and certainly not as beautiful as the arrow that Fordal had taken, but there was something about it that Fordal found attractive. Maybe to Fordal it was attractive because the Orc in full armor had felt it was important enough to wear, or maybe it was an object of good luck, a charm. Other Orcs in Fordal’s tribe were in possession of certain objects that they felt were important or good luck. For some reason this ancient Orc had chosen to wear it and Fordal decided to make it his.

Fordal removed the necklace and carefully fastened it around his thick, dark purple neck. Once secure he reached for it, grasping the stone in the center and massaging it curiously. He took another look at the Orc for other small objects that he could acquire and upon finding none he moved back to the mouth of the small cave. He could no longer hear the lamentations of his cohorts hunting in the hills, but was unafraid. A new thought. He would find them. A new thought. He would show them the arrow that he had found. A new thought.

A small campfire had been burning for the feast that was being prepared. Fordal smelled the fire and the flesh that was cooking over it. He ran down a small barren ravine and saw a group of Orcs, nine in all, standing around the fire, some of them drooling while others were preoccupied with acquiring more firewood. One Orc, the hunting-band leader Mismal, saw Fordal approach. Mismal was disgusted with Fordal because Fordal was weak and scrawny and did little for the band when they hunted, but demanded food from the band when the kill was made. It was a primitive, selfish form of thought, but a common thought amongst the Orcs because they valued food much more than they valued friendship. Fordal came to them with excitement about his find and he produced the arrow from underneath his tunic to show the other Orcs.

With an outstretched hand, Fordal handed the arrow to Mismal for approval. Mismal backed away from the arrow at first because he also had never seen such an arrow before. The other Orcs in the band jumped up and down excitedly as the arrow was visible, for it was truly a unique item in their primitive existence. Mismal was not any smarter than the other Orcs, but through the cycles he had forced himself to lead them through sheer brute power alone. Fordal was surprised by the actions of the other Orcs upon seeing the arrow and a new thought came to him but he didn’t understand what to do with the thought.

Mismal grabbed the arrow from Fordal’s outstretched hand and then he pushed Fordal to the ground. He slapped the arrow against his chest a few times to signify to everyone there that it was his. Fordal did not approve of the action but he was used to the abuse by Mismal, the larger Orc now holding the arrow with care and curiosity. Mismal watched as the scrawny Orc wiped the dirt from his body, from his clothing and from his hands after he had thrown him to the ground. Fordal did not understand why he was wiping the dirt away from himself after Mismal had thrown him to the ground. In fact, in every occurrence of Mismal throwing Fordal to the ground, Fordal had never bothered to remove the dirt from his body. It was an action that the other Orcs noticed as well and they stared at Fordal with a desire to understand, but they could not understand.

Upon finishing, Fordal turned from Mismal and walked to the fire. A gutted boar was cooking nicely there and Fordal remembered that he was hungry. Mismal followed Fordal to the fire and offered the arrow back to the scrawny Orc. Fordal studied Mismal’s request for a moment, shook his head and then turned back to the fire. The stone inside the necklace around Fordal’s neck began to glow. Another Orc in the party noticed the necklace and yelled, backing away from the fire. Mismal, still overwhelmed with the arrow, turned to the Orc with a questioning glance. The Orc pointed at Fordal and then pointed at its own neck and then back to Fordal. Mismal grabbed Fordal to turn him and the necklace came into full view. Fordal braced to be struck by Mismal but the strike never came. Mismal pointed at the necklace and then pointed at his own neck, a sign that he wanted the necklace.

In all the preceding incidents involving Mismal, Fordal would have obeyed his every wish. Fordal had always done everything he could to be obedient to Mismal, but as he watched his fellow Orc point to his own neck to describe to him that he wanted his necklace, a new thought came to Fordal. That new thought was a simple thought; an answer, and that answer was no. Mismal stood there in total disbelief as Fordal backed away from him, and again demanded the necklace. Fordal shook his head again, no. Mismal threw the arrow he was holding at Fordal and it bounced harmlessly sideways against Fordal’s chest, the smaller Orc’s leather tunic absorbing the impact. Fordal reached down and picked up the arrow and placed it back underneath his tunic to secure it. The action enraged Mismal so much that he grabbed a log from the fire and swung it with all his might at Fordal and the blow hit the scrawny Orc squarely across the back. Fordal screamed in pain from the attack and ran from the camp, the other Orcs watching and cheering on Mismal as he committed this act of violence against Fordal. Mismal did not pursue Fordal, but chose instead to stand with the Orc hunting party and absorb their cheers with delight.

Into the evening and as the Orcs slumbered from their fill of cooked boar and other stipends they found on their hunt for the day, Fordal was watching them from the distance, hungry and cold. He watched them with patience uncanny for an Orc. He watched them with rage. When the other Orcs were sleeping, Fordal moved back to the camp, stole a large sliver of food from the kill and took one of the Orc archer’s bows. He also took a plank of fire that remained from the campfire and moved a few hundred feet away from the main camp to create his own. He did this while the stone around his neck grew brighter and brighter. They were new thoughts, powerful thoughts.

Near dawn the following morning, the other Orcs shook Mismal awake in the camp and they gestured to Mismal about the missing food and the missing bow. Mismal peered in the distance and saw a small plume of smoke from Fordal’s newly erected camp and he went berserk. The Orc hunting band leader pulled a makeshift stone knife from his leather backpack and headed to the Fordal’s campfire, the other Orcs giving him a wide berth and then following excitedly. Mismal stammered into Fordal’s camp, kicking the fire out and tossing the camp about. He searched for Fordal but the scrawny Orc was not in the camp, and he waved his stone knife perilously screaming for Fordal to come out from his hiding place and fight.

Fordal was awake and was in fact ready for Mismal. He watched as Mismal approached in a rage and he pulled back on the bow that harbored the shiny arrow that he had found in the cave and took aim. The scrawny Orc released the twisted sinew of threads and the shaft took to the air.

Mismal felt a very powerful solid pain in his chest that removed the air from his lungs. He didn’t know what had happened to him at first, but then he looked down at his chest in absolute horror as he saw that just a few inches of the magic arrow was remaining outside his body. With a cough, a spurt of blood left his mouth and trickled down his cheek onto his chest. He screamed so loudly at his fate that the other Orcs froze in fear themselves watching Mismal fall to one knee and then completely to the ground. Fordal stood then from behind the safety of his firing position and held the bow above his head and screamed in conquest. The stone around his neck glowed brightly and it lit his eyes with power. The remaining Orcs scattered immediately upon seeing this and they ran in completely different directions like a dispersed mob. It would take Fordal just a few hours that morning to hunt and kill the rest of the party.

When it was over, Fordal moved back to the cave that he had found, unfastened the armor from the dead Orc and took it for himself. Only a scant few hours before he had absolutely no idea what the armor was for. He left the cave with the armor and returned to his village three moons away. Upon seeing him approach, the villagers embraced him with fascination. The villagers, as ordinary Orcs, saw that it was Fordal and that he had changed and calm swept over them. The village soon fell to the power of his newly formed ideas and his leadership as derived from the glowing stone around his neck.

Within half a cycle over twenty Orc villages, strangers amongst themselves only weeks before, now formed an alliance under Fordal’s leadership. In a full cycle, Orc civilization began anew.

Dragon’s Haven, Neoluzia 1131

Almost six hundred cycles after Fordal restarted Orc civilization, the achievements of the Orcs in the advancement of their culture was incredible. In the depths of Dragon’s Haven a small group of the most vile and evil spell casters gathered. The warmth from the hollowed room that they did their dance permeated them and the temperature there was excessively hot. Beneath their feet the veins of the Arch of Despair flooded underground rivers with flowing lava streams. The casters enjoyed the dark, slimy, steamy aspect of the cave, the heat and perspiration from their bodies dripped to the ground as they moved slowly in unison together, forming a circular formation. They each had a necklace with a glowing stone dangling from a hitch in the center, and there were eight casters in all. They were apprentices of the darkest rites long since forgotten in the world, but their confidence in ability seemed more professional than a mere apprenticeship. As they moved together in the candlelight of the room, the stones around their necks began to glow, slowly at first, and then more and more brightly with each rotation that they made. With the increased lighting in the room a large carving appeared in the floor that was not visible before, and the Orc magic users circled around the carving precariously trying not to step inside the circle. One of the evil Orc spell casters paused and crouched to the circle and said a word, the rest chanting when he did so.

Alakooorahhhhhbesteriat, the caster spoke, placing a small blue stone in the circle.

The stone ignited with a blue flash and a steady red flame began to burn on a corner of the pattern within the circle. The rest of the Orc spell casters steadied the flame with their chanting, a steady, seducing Ahhhhhwaaaaaaaaa sounding monotone that kept repeating over and over.

Again they danced around the circle, each evil Orc spell caster pausing at precise moments and casting their blue stones onto a particular corner of the symbol. With each stone placed on the circular diagram carved into the stone floor the red flame grew stronger and stronger. The outline of the circle they were dancing around now appeared very visible against the red flames that burned with no fuel source, a triangle mixed with symbols and intricate designs. A large dragon was carved in the center of the circle and the reflection of it cast by the red flames danced around the room as a shadow. The vile, cloaked figures appeared proud of themselves as the flames grew. When the last apprentice placed his stone into the circle, the flames shot to the ceiling of the room and the heat was enormously powerful. The flames never left the circle but the impact of the fire raged and seared the Orc spell casters that created it. There was a weakening in the chanting then and that is when things started to go wrong.

Arkan Spiritstrike was watching his apprentices from the very beginning of the ritual, and it was he that first sensed the undoing of the attempt. He screamed instructions to the eight junior Orc wizards as the heat from the flames caused them to lose concentration. The eight apprentices turned to their master with the look of an underling asking for immediate forgiveness and understanding, but there was nothing that Arkan Spiritstrike could do to save them. The flames took a life of their own, trickling to the edge of the circle, the pressure from the furnace pulling the casters to the center. Each apprentice was drawn screaming into the flames, the shrill sound of their voices curdling and filled with suffering. The flames reached a fevered pitch when the last caster was drawn into them and then a large glowing gate appeared with a sound of thunder that echoed in the cavern. Arkan was not prepared for this eventuality but he was curious, clenching his hand in retreat from a spell that he had readied to cast a counter-spell to control the fires that grew around his Orc apprentice wizards that had been consumed.

The gate appeared fully and the flames made way for it. When it opened the sound was a deafening shriek, a blast of thunder following as the dimensional portal connected two worlds into one. Arkan leaned against the far wall with incredible curiosity mingled with a touch a fear. His eight apprentices were nowhere to be seen. They had been consumed totally by the flames. The gate that took the place of the flames pulsed with power and fury, the most powerful energy source Arkan had ever seen and experienced.

Master…master…are you there? Arkan called out. He moved from the wall, his short, stalking frame swaying sturdily under the blue robe that he wore. With amplifier rings on almost every finger and amplifier stones sewn into his robe he had become a fairly proficient wizard, his minions traveling the northern lands in search of spells and ancient lost artifacts to further increase his power.

Antiluminous! I call to thee! Come forward and claim your righteous place as leader of the Orcs! Arkan yelled. Still there was no movement at the gate. The ritual had gone wrong, terribly wrong. His apprentices had died in the attempt. He had trained them for cycles and while there were others for him to call on for another attempt, this attempt was very costly. Arkan wanted the most evil of evils to return. It was a worthy sacrifice and that is what his minions were designed for.

Suddenly and again without warning the magic gate began to fade. For a brief instant, Arkan was tempted to pass through it but panic took him and he refrained. It was the fear of the unknown. With a sizzling sound of breaking glass the magic gate collapsed and darkness returned to the room. In the center of the circle were eight glowing stones that slowly lost their light, fading as the souls that carried them had faded moments before. Arkan moved to the circle and was surprised by how quickly it had cooled. He picked up the stones and placed them underneath a flap in his robe, bowing his head in frustration.

Arkan was an Orc wizard and the Orc dictator and he hated failing. His screams of frustration echoed in the tunnels underneath the Arch of Despair that day, the sutars of minions working steadily for the domination of Neoluzia giving him unrestricted movement lest he cast them down into a painful demise.

The gate dimension spell was a high-level spell, but even Arkan did not know exactly how high of a level spell it was. That was the reason why he had not personally attempted the spell himself. For cycles he had gathered the most promising and proficient junior Orc wizards and trained them in lower magic. Arkan had deciphered a spell that was found in the old tunnels of Dragon’s Haven; a spell so antiquated that it had to be cross-referenced against sutars of other spells. It was a spell so precious, so dangerous, that Arkan enlisted the help of many willing servants who unknowingly would give their lives while trying to initiate it. Magic users who mastered spells were no longer in danger from using the researched spell. The danger came in the research. Any number of issues could go wrong at any moment, but research was necessary so that the spell could finally be mastered. Arkan was closer to mastering the gate dimension spell with this latest attempt, but the failures had tried his patience to the limit. He had believed that this latest attempt would open a dimensional portal so that the greatest evil Orc ever to walk in the land