Pyrite

By David Gilchrist

The second volume in David Gilchrist The Redemption of Wist series.

When Wist and Aviti land in the Northern continent, Pyrite, still pursuing Tilden, a black sun arrives in the sky, threatening the land and the Sun itself.

They find Pyrite engulfed in war. The Intoli have emerged from the frozen wastes of Prasad destroy the native Giants and take Aviti prisoner to help in their fight . Meanwhile Wist's need for revenge threatens his sanity and all those around him.

Trapped on opposing sides of a war, they must find their own paths to freedom, or allow Pyrite to fall under the influence of the black sun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Gilchrist
• Release date: Nov 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310575068

Book preview

The Redemption of Wist

Book 2: Pyrite

Pyrite

Pyrite

By

David Gilchrist

Print Edition

First Published 2015

By David Gilchrist

Copyright © David Gilchrist

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Dedication

For Lyndsey, Alexander, Oliver and Lewis. My Sun, moon, stars and everything in-between.

And for Sam. Sammo made me do it.

A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.

Gandhi

What Has Gone Before

WIST falls through the gates to the ancient desert city of Mashesh bereft of everything, even his memory. After Aviti, an inhabitant of Mashesh, rescues him, she nurses him back to health. During this time, he discovers that three centuries have passed in this land since his last visit and that Tilden, an ancient enemy of Wist's, has returned as well. Also, he learns that a curse has descended upon Mashesh. Some of the dead refuse to die (the Damned).

He finds out that after his disappearance, 300 years hence, the churches subsumed Wist's legend into their teachings and used his downfall to outlaw magic and secure their power. Wist also discovers that Eliscius, his guardian and mentor during his previous time in Mashesh, may still, impossibly be alive.

As Wist recovers in the care of Aviti and her family, Tilden sends the Lyrats, a fierce, nomadic people, to destroy Mashesh.

When the Lyrats descend upon the city, two of their number, who have exiled themselves from their people, rescue Wist and Aviti. They guide them to the safety of the open desert, leaving Mashesh and its inhabitants to their doom. These two Lyrats (Faric and Tyla) are a Pair and they share a magical connection – a bond – that allows them to sense each other.

Whilst they flee, an attack by the Waren, a soulless darkness, triggers a latent ability in Aviti. This allows Aviti to channel the magical power present in this world.

Once away from Mashesh, Tyla and Faric reveal that Eliscius helped them to break Tilden's hold over them. They also tell Wist that Eliscius waits for him in the mountains to the north of Mashesh. Lost in a world he doesn't understand, Wist passively agrees to go.

They travel north and as they do, Wist's memories begin to break through his mind's barriers. They reveal to him glimpses of his previous time in this land, and of another life – another world. His real world.

Then, when Aviti falls in a river, Tyla follows in an attempt save her and they become separated from the group. Aviti and Tyla are attacked in the desert and Tyla receives a near fatal blow severing his bond with Faric. They flee the attack and make for the rest of their group.

Meanwhile, Wist and Faric travel on toward Eliscius. In the mountains they encounter Nikka. He is a dark Cerni Dwarf who lives isolated from his people on the mountains at the edge of the desert. He agrees to help them find Eliscius, but before they can begin their search, Dregan, a powerful mage and companion of Eliscius, finds them.

Dregan takes them to Eliscius in his mountain fortress where they wait for Aviti to join them. Eliscius reveals that he saw Wist in his own world – his real world. Eliscius tells Wist that he witnessed Wist's suicide. He tells Wist that his suicide is what has enabled him to re-enter this secondary world. Wist denies it and isolates himself from the group, fearing the truth.

As Aviti and Tyla, reach the mountain, Tilden attacks them with an overwhelming force of enslaved Lyrats and animate Damned. Tilden's demands Eliscius as his prisoner as the price for halting his attack. He tells them to follow him to Bohba if they want Eliscius returned. Using his dark allies, the Waren to transport them, he vanishes.

So they set off for Bohba. Wist retreats into himself, allowing his path to be chosen for him, but more memories break through to him, threatening his sanity. He sees his first time in Mashesh and that he escaped back to his own world when Tilden tried, and failed to kill him, but the price was a rupture in the fabric of this world. A rift now runs the length of the whole world.

Meanwhile, Aviti uses her magical abilities more and more, finding the use of it addictive. She struggles to balance her need for it and the fear of losing herself.

Deep in the heart of the desert they find a powerful ally in the form of the mysterious Enceladus. He grants them all visions of their future or warnings about their paths. He also provides them with a means of getting to Bohba. Enceladus unlocks the memory of Wist's father's murder and how the shock of witnessing it was the vehicle that first transported him to Tapasya.

Upon reaching there, they find where Tilden has imprisoned Eliscius, but their rescue attempt is a disaster. Nikka slips and knocks himself out, Dregan panics and freezes and Tilden overpowers the others with his magic. Then Tilden murders first Eliscius and then Faric, and Wist and his companions find themselves once more at Tilden's mercy.

Then Tilden reveals that he is Wist's twin brother and that he was pulled in to this world by Wist and has been imprisoned there since Wist's first exit. Tilden tells Wist that he must die for him to be free. He says that Wist must complete his suicide in this world to set him and the Waren, his allies, loose upon the universe. He offers Wist a cup to drink telling him that it will bring an end to everything.

Aviti breaks his hold and helps Wist to defy Tilden and he casts the cup over Tilden, burning his brother's face. Wist's passivity is shattered as Tilden flees again, with the help of the Waren. Wist's passion unleashes turmoil in the land, and he vows to kill his brother whatever the cost.

Then they set sail for Pyrite as they can think of no other place to start the search for Tilden, with no clear plan other than murder in Wist's heart and a lust for power in Aviti's soul.

Chapter 1 Self-Inflicted

Grit lined Wist's mouth. Its flavour was different to the desert of Tapasya. Bitter iron and the tang of seawater had usurped the vapid sand.

Sense returned to him.

Nikka.

He remembered the dark Cerni dwarf colliding with him on the ship.

The ship. What happened on the ship? They had been attacked, hadn't they?

An irrefutable hand rolled him over and he opened his eyes. It was Tyla. The Lyrat's dark skin gave Wist the impression of looking into a hole in the pre-dawn gloom; a space where light should be. Nikka stood away from Tyla, cursing and pouring water out of his boots.

A cold certainty sat within Wist, as if something insatiable had fed.

Sunlight broke over the eastern horizon and it pierced Wist's self-containment. 'Get up,' barked Nikka. 'Get up,' he repeated when Wist failed to acknowledge him. 'We must get off the shore. That spectacle last night must have been seen by half of the world.' With his boots returned to his feet, Nikka joined Tyla. Then they each placed a hand under Wist's arms and lifted him to his feet.

'The Cerni speaks truly,' said Tyla. The slavers will be angered by the loss of their vessels.' The final word sounded unnatural when spoken by the Lyrat. The cadences of his voice slurred the word and blurred its edges.

Slavers? Vessels?

'But Aviti,' began Wist. His own voice sounded deeper than he expected it to.

'What of her? What of the Mage? What of the sailors?' snapped Nikka, motioning to the water. 'Dead? Lost? What difference does it make? They are not here, and we cannot help Aviti or Dregan now.'

Wist looked where Nikka pointed. There were bodies on the beach, lots of them. 'We must be gone,' continued Nikka, and Tyla nodded in agreement, but the Lyrat's visage shouted of unspoken grief and compounded loss.

Wist's mismatched companions walked up the greasy, ash coloured beach and away from the coastline. Wist trailed behind them, struggling up the slope of sand.

Was Aviti dead? If she was, he knew where he would lay her death. He may not have been there, but he was behind this all. It all came back to him.

When they crested the first hill, an array of similar ones greeted them. The black, coarse sand of the beach disappeared under blossoming grassland. Unbothered by such beauty, Tyla and Nikka continued to press on. They would not be satisfied until the sea lay a score of miles from them, but Wist took a moment to pause at the crest of the hill.

Where would he hide?

Medicaut would be the obvious answer, but was it too simple a snare? Medicaut: the city in the mountains, the site of Eliscius' transfiguration, or rather his second one. The first had taken place during the leader's attempted execution in the Great Desert.

What a fitting place to finish me off, thought Wist, but it would be Tilden that would meet his end. Oblivion was too good for him.

So he set off and followed Nikka and Tyla again, the last of their kind. Tyla's people, the Lyrats, were definitely lost. Tilden corrupted them, bent them to his will and used them to destroy the city of Mashesh, just to get at Wist. Then Tilden forced them across a continent and they met their doom at the hands of the Volni, the light-skinned antithesis of the Cerni.

And what of the Cerni? The sentinel Enceladus had shown Nikka visions of his kin's fall. Perhaps Nikka misinterpreted the visions, but he was convinced that his people were gone, consumed by the deathless curse that festered in Mashesh. And it had spread along the rift in the world, that massive crack that began at the edge of the desert city and ran through the continent of Tapasya and beyond. It spread and produced soulless Damned to wander the land.

Wist still wasn't sure whether Eliscius' preternaturally long life was linked to the fate of the Damned. Hadn't Eliscius wandered the world, deathless, until Tilden opened his throat?

Yes, it all came back to Tilden. Wist's failure to confront Tilden in Jerel's Tower pierced his heart. His failure had been the last victory of his stasis; the stasis which had hamstrung him on Tapasya.

His suicide in his other world – his real world; the murder of his father; the betrayal of Tilden, his twin brother; even the fragmented memories that still plagued him; none of it mattered. The incandescent emotions that shook Jerel's tower in Tapasya had incinerated his paralysis. It burned away all of Wist's constraints.

Tilden could hide, but Wist would find him and he would kill him.

They marched north through the lush grass of the fields until Tyla brought them to a halt at midday. Then they rested on the side of a small hill. There was no need for a fire. The day held sufficient heat for them, so they ate cold rations that Tyla had salvaged.

He must hate this, thought Wist: the grass underfoot, the unthreatening heat of the sun, the moisture in the air and the overwhelming veracity of life. Even the sound of a small burn, as it babbled through the land, must be foreign to him. But the scars lay flat across the desert man's forehead.

'What happened on the ship?' asked Nikka. The abrupt question caught Wist off-guard, but it was the Cerni's tone that unsettled him. More than a sliver of accusation lay hidden in the question.

'No idea, why don't you tell me,' said Wist.

Nikka looked at him for several moments. Perhaps he waited for Wist to break his silence. Then the Cerni laughed. It started off as a bitter, sharp laugh; a toxic bark. Then it modulated. It softened and deepened, as Nikka pulled back from an internal crisis.

'Only you could sink three ships, send ten score men to their graves, near kill us too and then claim no knowledge. And what is worse, I almost believe you.'

Sink ships?

'I don't … I don't,' began Wist. The ghost of his past stirred in its slumber. Tyla surveyed the horizon, and then he exchanged a look with Nikka.

'I remember shooting arrows at the pirates,' said Wist.

'Pirates?' said Nikka.

'Pirates - slavers, whatever,' said Wist. 'I remember them closing in on us. I remember Tilden's face appearing before me, goading me. Then, they must have... They must have rammed us. I was in the water and a felt an arm around me. Tyla's I think.' The Lyrat nodded.

'You incinerated two of the pursuing ships and then scuttled ours,' said Nikka, his temper gone. 'I thought you were trying to bore a hole in the world.'

Scuttled ours?

'If not for the Cerni, we would have perished.' The finality in Tyla's voice held no relief for Wist.

'No,' said Wist. 'No. I remember the ships. I remember firing the arrows and then we crashed. That was all.'

Nikka began to speak, but Tyla cut across him. This time it was the Lyrat who denied him. 'No. Accept your actions or damn us all.'

'I didn't,' protested Wist. 'I only tried to...' But as he spoke it came back to him. His mind's fractured walls could protect him no longer.

He'd burned all those people on the ships. When he had lost control, something had blossomed inside of him; something dark and bitter. He recalled it as clearly as his other failures, in this life and the other one. Failures from his real life.

Wist nodded to Nikka; an acceptance of his crimes. 'Oh God, Aviti,' he said. 'I sent her to her death.'

Tyla denied him again. 'No. We have survived. Many of the slavers survived also, but we were forced to travel west to avoid them. Perhaps the slavers have them, or perhaps they too have evaded capture.'

'Aye,' said Nikka as he looked up at the sun. 'Whatever has happened, we cannot hope to find her, or the Mage.' He threw his hands wide apart and gestured to the land that lay before them. Rivers, valleys, hills and plains filled this land.

Nikka was right. Aviti. The girl who had saved him from death; the woman who freed him to deny Tilden, she was gone.

Fuel for the fire.

The Lyrat spoke, rousing Wist from his thoughts. 'If Medicaut is our target, which way do we go? Dregan was our guide.'

'Simple,' said Wist. 'north. Eliscius spoke of heading into the mountains in the north.'

The Cerni replied 'Aye, but where is the mountain he spoke of in the north? If this land is half of the size of Tapasya we may be years searching.'

'Then we'll head north until we find someone to ask.' Did they think Tilden would be content with allowing them to wander aimlessly? Wist felt a strange sense of surety as he made these decisions. This was his time to strike back. An urgent need moiled inside him. It twisted in his guts like a serpent.

'And what if it happens again?' asked Nikka, his dark features tight with implications. Wist blinked. 'What if you repeat your performance on the ship? I cannot drag you into the water here.'

'It won't,' said Wist as details of what had occurred dripped through the damaged barriers of his mind. 'I just...lost control, for a time.' It was a lie so blatant that the Cerni should have laughed in his face, but Nikka nodded.

Tyla stood up and left them to rest while he scouted out the area.

-*-

Wist rested for an hour, whilst he waited for the Lyrats return, but the Cerni was never idle. He started by checking his hammer for flaws. He ran his truncated digits over the metal, checking for weakness or any pre-disposition for failure. Then he moved to the leather-wrapped, wooden shaft and applied a touch of oil.

After he had completed his ministrations to the weapon, he looked over the rest of his equipment, humming all the time. His tune did not end, but neither did it repeat. It twisted and reformed, adapting to whatever the dark dwarf did.

'Thanks,' said Wist. Nikka stopped humming and reassembled his pack.

'Thanks? For what?' asked the Cerni, with more than a touch of mischief in his dark eyes.

'You know what for,' said Wist. '…on the boat.' Nikka nodded, but said nothing else. As the silence deepened, Tyla appeared over the hilltop, accompanied by a fresh wind.

Wist jumped to his feet and went to confront Tyla. 'What then? Did you find anything? What did you see?'

'I cannot be sure,' said Tyla.

'What?'

The Lyrat shrugged. 'I cannot tell.' Tyla paused, as if he sought the correct phrase. 'But we are amongst the Giants.'

'Giants, Christ,' said Wist. Dregan had mentioned the Giants, but he had planned to take them through the human inhabited lands to the east. They must be much further west than they should be.

'What does Tilden want with Giants?' asked Wist. He had experience at the hands of the Gorgoth. One of those brutes had lead Tilden's forces when he had first tried to destroy Mashesh.

'The question you should be asking,' said Nikka, 'is how we get to Medicaut, once we determine where it is.'

'Indeed,' said someone from behind Wist. 'You are hardly likely to be mistaken for a brother of mine.’ Tyla blinked and loosed his Katana. Nikka tensed as Wist whirled around, but his hammer stayed on its familiar place on his shoulder.

Wist expected to see the green malevolent eyes of Tilden. The eyes he saw were gentle and blue, set in a face that resembled the side of a mountain. This Giant was unarmed, unless there were weapons concealed in his earthen apparel.

'Who are you?' asked Wist, as if knowing the name of his adversary would provide him with a course of action.

'This is my land,' said the Giant, with a voice as gentle as the hills which surrounded them, 'and these are troubled times. So perhaps I should be asking the questions?'

Nikka inclined his head to the newcomer. 'I am Nikka,' said the dwarf to prevent Wist from issuing a sharp reply, 'Cerni by birth and free by choice. This is Tyla, last of the desert Nomads. And our pale companion -' the dwarf faltered for an instant. 'He is Wist.'

The Giant showed no hint of reaction at any of their names. Instead, he bowed to each of them in turn. The inflection of his head had a comical air as if all it lacked were a motley cap and bells. 'Then,' he said, 'having received a gift as valuable as your true names I shall return the gesture, returning the honour upon the giver. I am Haumea the slight, third Glaine and least in the sight of Ionracas. But Giant I am, nonetheless.'

'You will forgive my eavesdropping.' said Haumea.

'I would settle for finding out how you did it,' said Nikka with a grin.

The Giant returned the dwarf's smile. 'Ah, even a mountain may go unnoticed if it remains unmoving for a time. You seek Medicaut, do you not?'

Wist nodded and earned a glance from Tyla.

'Why? What would you hope to find there?'

'That is our business,' replied Wist. 'We have no interest in you or your people. Just point us in the right direction and we'll give you no trouble.'

As Haumea's smile broadened, Wist noticed for the first time how lopsided it was. 'Your mystery deepens my friends. But before I answer your enquiries, tell me of the light in the sky last night. What do know you of that?'

'We saw the light,' said Tyla in Wist's place.

Haumea did not react to the evasion, but asked another question. 'How did you get here? There are no deserts in Pyrite - no dark dwarfs and no men left this far east in the middle of a war.'

'War?' said Wist. 'What war?'

The Giant coloured, but refused to answer the question and continued to stare at them.

Nikka was the first to speak. 'I have seen war. I have even been the cause of war. Being the wrong shape, colour or species in the middle of a war is no place to be.'

'We came ashore last night,' said Wist, determined to keep control of the situation, 'under the cover of darkness.'

The Giant exhaled. The rattling breath reminded Wist of N'tini, Aviti's father. 'You claim no knowledge of this land. This I believe. But you arrive amidst a fire storm and the sinking of ships. That your coming is a coincidence is too much for me to countenance.'

'You leave me with a decision to make, do you not?' Haumea said, shifting from one foot to another. 'I have neither the strength, nor the aptitude to subdue you all. In truth, I suspect I would have trouble capturing any of you - although you,' Haumea pointed at Wist, 'would be my preferred option.' The Giant chuckled and then held his hands up in a placating gesture.

'So what is your course of action,' asked Nikka, 'now that you have eschewed violence?' The Cerni's face mirrored the humour implied in the Giant's words.

The Giant threw its hands wide and with a lurid flourish it pirouetted. As it came back around, it laughed. 'Ah, my friends, I must ask you to accompany me for a time. I must take you to those better suited for matters of import, for I am only a humble servant, a mere... scullery maid. Of sorts'

Wist looked again at the Giant, and there it was - a softness around the eyes, a subtle curvature around the hips and breasts.

'Yes,' said Wist, then he turned to his companions. 'What choice do we have?' Nikka and Tyla exchanged a glance and then the Cerni nodded.

'Perhaps,' said Wist, 'we will find Aviti too.'

Nikka looked doubtful, but he added. 'Aye, and the Mage.' Then Haumea walked away and urged them to follow. At every other step she scanned the terrain as she shifted her weight. The Giantess' lopsided gait did not seem to hinder her progress,

After they had walked for a league, they came to the top of a gentle rise. Instead of more green and brown hills, there was a line. From the coast in the south, it snaked its way northward through the hills; the scar in the world, the mark of Wist's first failure. Wist shivered and looked away.

Later, Haumea halted them beside a couple of twisted sequoia trees that sat guard at the top of a hill. The sun was setting, so Nikka and Tyla helped the Giant to ready a camp for the night. The air felt cool already. Damp, verdant smells filled Wist's nose. He sat on a bedroll that Tyla had rescued from the debris of the ship's wreckage. He looked over the shadowed ground to the tiny points of light that appeared alongside the divide.

'Maybe Aviti is there,' said Nikka as he sat down beside Wist. Wist muttered something to hide his shame. He hadn't thought of her since they started moving. She had just slipped from his mind again.

Haumea sat down and Tyla joined them after a ritual check of the camp. Darkness would be on them soon. The Giantess hummed a tuneless ditty as she prepared a meal for them all. Nikka helped her as she ghosted from one task to another.

A melody sprang up between them. Wist couldn't tell who started it. Perhaps the Cerni had latched onto Haumea's tune or the Giantess modulated his melody, but after a while the Giantess began to sing.

Thou hearth be filled with ash,

and heat and smoke no more,

Light has gone,

the flame consumed the night.

As winter passed from the world,

take grief and darkness too.

Let Spring reclaim the land for all

Let sparks rekindle life anew.

For darkness may take thy hearth

And flames consume thy time,

But light returns when needed most

and sweetness lingers on.

Wist tried to grasp the hope in the song, but it proved as elusive as peace. So he stood up and walked from his companions to look down onto the valley. It looked as though a massive serpent had crawled out of the sea and eaten its way up the land, devouring rock, soil, trees and life. After a moment, the sight shamed him, so he looked to the darkening eastern horizon.

Thousands of trees were there; hard, sharp trees. Maybe pine trees, but at this distance it was impossible to be sure. Then he glanced back to the west, past where Nikka now stood, to where the sun's halo disappeared between two titanic mountains. Nikka raised his right arm and pointed over Wist's shoulder, back to where he stared a moment before. The Cerni opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He closed, opened, then closed it once more. Tyla was beside him a heartbeat later. He looked and raised an eyebrow.

Wist turned as Haumea stood up, but nothing could have prepared him for what he saw. Crawling into the sky it came. At first mere tendrils of purest midnight were visible. They writhed in the blue-blackness of night's first touch.

Haumea mouthed a curse, and then said. 'Not a weapon of the Intoli surely? Who had the power to give birth to such a horror? But if not a weapon, then what is it?'

Little by little, piece by piece, a black disc emerged over the eastern horizon, a hole in reality, in through which malevolent fear poured.

Wist stared into the black hole in the night's sky. It writhed and pulsed as it crawled through the sky. Haumea and Nikka talked, trying to find a frame of reference for their fears. Behind them, he heard the occasional call of an animal; a wolf or something worse, but Wist did not care. The black disc was all that there was.

Then Tyla screamed.

Chapter 2 With Barely A Breath

Aviti awoke as her body hit the land. She heard a rasping guttural noise, like a soul fighting for breath. Then she felt arms under her, wrapped around her body, gripping her tight. If she had any energy left, she would have tried to break free. She orientated herself after a second. She was on her side, her face against damp sand. A shaft of light burned her eyes as she moved her head. She shook herself, trying to loosen her captor's grip.

'A second,' came a familiar voice, between pants, 'please'.

Then the arms which surrounded her were unlocked, so she tried to raise her head to see more than just the dark sand, but her head span. Her body felt beaten and the back of her skull ached. She sat up at the second attempt, but had to hold her head in her hands as she fought to contain the beating within it. The aroma of blood in the air was too much for her, and after a futile second trying to hold it in, she expelled the contents of her stomach onto the beach.

The man who had held her cursed and jerked himself away from her violent expulsion. Dregan's dark robes were ruined anyway. Most of his torso was exposed, displaying an array of cuts and gashes. Blood trickled from a couple of the wounds.

Aviti wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, tasting salt and blood. The back of her head throbbed. When she put a hand to the base of her skull she found it sticky with matted hair, salt-water and blood. Then she found a cut, about an inch long. Touching it brought a fresh bout of giddiness. Dregan pulled her round and examined it.

'It is clean, it will heal,' said the Mage. 'We must leave this place, find shelter. I must... I must find what has transpired. It is not as it should be.'

Aviti looked at the wreckage of the ships and humans on the beach.

The ship… That was right, the ship. She had been thrown into the water when…Before Aviti could straighten out her thoughts, Dregan grabbed her and forced her to her feet. She clung to him to stay erect.

At a cry from along the beach his grip tightened on her arm. It was from a sailor, dying amongst the flotsam. Then