Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Lliferock Read online

  Intense pain shot through each of them as the last bits of Yonik rejoined Tepuis Garen. Gvint felt it most deeply, being the eldest now. But each of the brotherhood sensed the passing of Yonik Bne. Those present nearly collapsed from the force of the rock’s signal.

  This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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  Jak Koke

  Gvint froze for several minutes; watched the urn slip from his hands shatter on the Deathstone. The rock released him from the ceremonial merging, and he dropped to his knees on the stone.

  Those of the brotherhood who were away in distant regions of Barsaive and the world beyond also felt the passing of Yonik Bne. They felt it like an ache in their gut — the dull pain of emptiness. But it passed quickly, and they knew what it was.

  Each took a moment to remember their brotherhood, remind-ing themselves of their true nature. Of their individual connection to Tepuis Garen.

  And all of them knew that Reid Quo — the next Elder —also felt the passing. Reid Quo heard and would return to join Gvint at the temple atop Tepuis Garen.

  When the signal had passed, Gvint stood, gathered up Yonik’s horkla and cleaned away the shards of the broken urn.

  The horkla would be mended, if necessary, and passed along to the next brother to enter adulthood. Gvint put the horkla with the other garments and began the meandering walk to the temple through the maze of natural columns and huge boulders which made up the Dance of Stones.

  He waited at the temple for Reid Quo to join him as the second Elder of the Garen Brotherhood. Every brotherhood must have two Elders. Yet, as the years went by and Reid did not return to Tepuis Garen, Gvint began to worry. Without Reid, there could be no namings and no births. Reid’s absence hurt the brotherhood.

  He tried to remember the last time he had seen Reid.

  About five hundred years before the Long Dreaming of the Scourge, when the thought of Horrors was distant and the land flourished, Reid and Gvint had returned to Ganwetrammus with most of the brotherhood to participate in the Fire Bath ceremony for Jibn Sra.

  Reid had been full of awe and energy, newly Awakened This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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  and just Named at his own Fire Bath forty or fifty years before. After the celebration, Reid had gone back out into the world. He had talked of Thera, the Netlundion brotherhood, and wondrous magic he would learn from the ancients there.

  Reid had visited brotherhoods in southwest Barsaive and beyond, devoting his life to sharing knowledge with brotherhoods across the world. He had spoken of his life as a journey that must never stop.

  Gvint had also traveled to Thera, briefly. And he had visited Netlundion — the only brotherhood on the island nation.

  From the magicians there, he had learned to master the intricacies of commanding the elements, but his path did not cross with Reid’s. The island was a crowded place, and Reid had already taken his leave of the island’s liferock. Later, as the Scourge approached, most of the Brotherhood returned to Tepuis Garen, but Reid never made it back. Gvint had assumed him lost or overseas, unable to return.

  There was a rumor that Ohin Yeenar, the last Elder of the Othellium Brotherhood, had seen Reid since the end of the Scourge. But no one from the Garen Brotherhood could con-firm the rumor, and Gvint didn’t put much faith in it. Ohin Yeenar was ancient even by obsidiman standards and his mind traveled a dangerous and meandering path, often fabricating events which may never have happened.

  Still, Reid couldn’t be dead. If he had died without returning — a horrible thought, but still a possibility — Ganwetrammus would know and call Jibn Sra, the next in line. Since that had not happened, Reid was alive, somewhere in the world, trying to get back.

  The only thing to do was wait.

  This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected])  Chapter Two 

  Pabl Evr arrived at his liferock on a day as clear as spring water; the mist ring which usually clung to the rock had dissipated in the afternoon heat. Pale blue sky peeked through the tiny spaces in the interlocking tree limbs. Underneath, the jungle slept; the air hung still and humid, keeping the buzzing insects in their nests and making the monkeys lazy for the afternoon. Under a fruiting banana tree a few miles from Tepuis Garen, Pabl and his two companions stopped on the edge of the trail to rest.

  The huge mesa loomed before them like a jagged wall of stone; they had been walking in its shadow for most of the morning, but the sun had finally cleared the rock. Now it shone through the high jungle canopy in sporadic patches.

  The cliff facing them was sheer; a waterfall plummeted over this side, erupting from the rock near the top and falling almost three thousand feet. The Garen Brotherhood called it the riflev — the water that flies.

  Pabl focused on the top of the tepuis just above the riflev.

  The temple of his brotherhood was perched there, on the cliff edge, but he could not see it from this distance. Built from 12

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  slabs of the same rock, it blended too well to be seen. The temple was Pabl’s destination; there he would end his twenty-year journey of exploration and learning. The end of his Awakening would be marked by the Fire Bath ritual when he would finally learn his Name in the language of his people, becoming at last an adult member of his brotherhood. And he was anxious for that.

  Of course it might not happen if Reid Quo had failed to return. The last Pabl heard, Reid had not been seen since well before Yonik Bne’s death ten years ago. Pabl had felt Yonik’s passing like a keen blow to his chest, a cold ache which chilled him like a winter storm.

  Still, there was hope that Reid had returned in the years since. And perhaps, even if Reid remained lost, the Fire Bath ritual could be performed by Gvint Od alone. Pabl didn’t know.

  That was why he had returned home.

  Pabl glanced down at his two companions. They looked haggard from the long journey, resting under the broad leaves of the banana tree. Road dust coated Jan’s red beard, dull-ing his normally animated face, and a fine lattice of thin salt lines had crystallized on his forehead below his fiery hair. Jan Farellon was a dwarf, and wore a stylish wizard’s cloak made from a collage of overlapping patches, each a different color and pattern. The blues and the reds were dingy with dirt and faded from long exposure to the sun.

  Now, Jan was hunched over, focusing on a thread-weaving puzzle which he held in both hands. His eyes were glazed over in that far-off stare which meant he was using thread sight.

  “This level is too tricky,” he said, looking up from the puzzle.

  “I can’t manage to weave to it.” He breathed a heavy sigh and tossed the puzzle to Pabl.

  “You’ve only been trying for an hour,” Pabl said, letting out a deep laugh.

  Jan looked up at him, a scowl on his face. “An hour today, This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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  an hour yesterday, and three hours the day before. I just can’t get past the fourth loop. My empty stomach must be affecting my concentration.”

  The elf, Celagri, mimicked Jan’s voice, adding a degree of whine. “My empty stomach must be affecting my otherwise flawless concentration.” She laughed.

  Celagri lay on the soft ground, her head resting on her pack, lounging in her scarred black leather pants and jerkin.

  She was slight of build, with the telltale pointed ears and fine bone lines. Her skin was the color of brown clay; she wore her black hair pulled into a tight knot behind her head, and shadows seemed to gather around her. Celagri was an excellent liar and a good thief. Jan and Pabl had met her in Kratas some ten years back and now trusted her completely, for she had saved their lives on several occasions.


  “Shut up, elf,” Jan said. “What do you know about thread-weaving, anyhow.”

  Celagri widened her eyes in mock shock. “Well, pardon me, your most noble master thread-weaver, sir. I didn’t mean to —”

  “Just shut up.”

  Pabl smiled, wondering if the two would break into a full bickering session. Now, that would be funny. Standing in a small patch of sunshine that penetrated the jungle’s bower, Pabl’s body was as wide as the other two combined, and easily twice the height of the dwarf. His ruddy skin was the color of red sandstone, like the cliff face, and his head sloped to a bare and hairless peak. He wore a loose shirt and trousers of plaited indigo and deep magenta, but no armor save the heavy bracers of dull silver which adorned his forearms.

  Pabl mainly used the bracers for fighting, but ever since he had started learning wizarding spells, they doubled as his grimoire. Each spell was cut as runes on the facets of small dia-monds which were set into the metal in a hexagonal pattern.

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  “Jan,” he said, “you must develop patience or you’ll never master the intricate items.”

  “When you learn quick combat spells, I’ll learn patience.”

  “I already know the spells.”

  “Yes, but you don’t use them fast enough.”

  “It doesn’t interest me to develop magic for combat. I have my hands and feet for that.” Pabl punched the air with clenched fists.

  “I know, I know,” Jan said, combing fingers through his beard. “You study spell casting only for knowledge of the universe.” Pabl heard the sarcasm in the dwarf’s voice, but it had no effect.

  “The more I know about the world, the more effectively I can heal it.”

  “Right, that other discipline you profess to follow.”

  “All obsidimen are purifiers at heart,” Pabl said. “Some of them just don’t listen to their hearts.”

  When Jan didn’t respond, Pabl looked down at the puzzle in his hands. It was shaped from silver wire, bent to form a hollow polyhedron with ten sides. The wire traced an intricate, but not identical pattern on each side, and in certain places the wire dropped into the center or across to another face of the puzzle. He had picked it up at Bocco’s Magic Emporium in Bartertown. The puzzles were novelties for thread-weavers, challenging and good practice for spellcasters. He liked this one because each successive anchor point was progressively more difficult to weave a thread to. He had managed to nego-tiate its loops and twists through seven tiers.

  He turned the polyhedron, nudging his mind to look at the object’s astral pattern. Each line of the wire was visible as thin glimmer of silver gossamer. Simple really, but growing more complex and difficult toward the center. As Pabl spun out the red gray filament of his thread, he concentrated on weaving it through the intricate interlacing of the puzzle’s This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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  pattern.

  The goal was to attach the thread to the key points, eventually reaching the center. As a simple precaution, Pabl never left his threads attached to it. You never know whose hands it might fall into.

  “Pabl?”

  Pabl let his thread astral dissipate, then squeezed his eyes closed and took a few steady breaths to clear his mind. When he opened them, he saw Celagri standing in front of him, brushing the dirt from her pants.

  “Ready?” said the elf.

  Pabl nodded, stowing the puzzle with his things and lifting the heavy backpack to his shoulders.

  “Good, then,” she said. “Let’s move.”

  Jan was slower. He cleaned himself off, retrieved a chunk of taro root to chew, and finally, with much grunting and carrying-on, hoisted his pack to his shoulders. He retrieved his wizard’s staff and nodded that he was ready. Jan had never liked the boring parts of the adventure, the hiking bits. But he lived for the thrilling discoveries, the chance confrontations.

  Pabl remembered when the two of them had first met Celagri. The elf, young and naive, had tried to steal the jeweled wart which protruded from the third finger of Pabl’s right hand, thinking it was a ring.

  Pabl had felt a small tugging, then nothing as the elf slipped off into the shadows. But Jan, always the quick one, caught the thief in a rapidly growing mass of magical vines which erupted suddenly from a small hedge to entangle and immobilize the unsuspecting elf.

  Celagri screamed to be let go. Jan yelled warnings and threats at the elf. Pabl merely laughed at the two of them, bickering furiously over nothing of importance. He laughed without restraint for minutes until the elf and the dwarf had This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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  stopped their yelling and stared at him.

  The three of them had been together ever since. Now, they walked the final miles to the village of Rabneth. The road in this part of the jungle was much wider and more heavily traveled than it had been when Pabl had been through here twenty years earlier. It hurts to see it.

  The road opened into a broad clearing, crowded at the edge by houses and low buildings made of wood and mud brick. Another new road led out of the clearing southwest around the base of the tepuis, and Pabl saw farmers driving carts along it. More development. But what really made his heart ache was the shantytown along the stream. About fifty or sixty ramshackle houses, built from bamboo and palm leaves, lined the stream on both sides.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  Jan looked up at him. “Looks like a miniature Bartertown,”

  he said. “Gambling, whoring, even a slave market.”

  Pabl felt a prickle wave travel along his skin. He hated places like this; they reminded him of the slums of Kratas.

  This was his home. A shantytown like this here was more than depressing. It was unacceptable. “This place is an insult to Tepuis Garen,” he said. “It must be destroyed.”

  “Now don’t get mad before we know everything,” Jan said.

  “I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Let me do the talking; I’ll find out what’s going on.” Jan smiled, then he cast a spell on himself to clean away the road dust from his robe.

  As they approached, much of the community stopped its daily labors and came out to greet the travelers. The towns-folk eyed Pabl with a mixture of suspicion and awe. When the three were completely surrounded and it was obvious that they weren’t going to be allowed to continue without intro-duction, the dwarf stepped forward.

  “My name is Jan Farellon,” he said, making a grand flourish in his patched robe. “Some of you know me, or did know This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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  me, as a youth. Untested and naive.

  “I have had many adventures since leaving twenty years ago, with my good friend, Pabl Evr, and our companion, Celagri.” Jan gestured to the elf and the obsidiman.

  Pabl had known Jan since waking from the rock, and the dwarf was his closest friend, but sometimes Jan could talk away even Pabl’s patience. Jan had grown up in Rabneth, bored and itching to get out by his fifteenth birthday. He always talked about how Pabl had rescued him from a life of cooking boiled potatoes and roasted wildebeest, of getting fat on Samson’s flat and stale brew. How he would’ve run off with a merchant caravan eventually.

  “I now return to Rabneth,” Jan continued, “an adult, tempered and weathered by my travels. Worn and jaded and cyni-cal, as you can see.”

  Abruptly, Pabl felt the pull of his liferock. Like a sublimi-nal, yearning wail, calling him. Everything around him faded.

  Jan and Celagri and the whole village fell forgotten from his mind. He merely looked past the clearing to the cliff face, towering and sheer,
straining up to the sky. Beautiful, he thought.

  Home.

  It had been years since he had experienced the Dreaming — communion with his brothers and the rock. He had been feeling the call of the rock for more than a year now, the compulsion to return. He had tried to resist at first because he wanted to stay in Bartertown to finish his training with Es-callio, the human wizard who had been mentor to both him and Jan.

  But now, as Jan spoke to the villagers, his voice fading into the background of Pabl’s consciousness, the vision of the tepuis ingrained itself into Pabl’s mind. As the smell of riflev water vapor, blowing in a fine mist, triggered his instincts, the drive to merge became insistent, growing in urgency until all This Book Belongs to: Andrew Tobin (black _ [email protected]) Liferock 

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  thoughts of other things left Pabl’s mind. He strayed slightly from the others, moving involuntarily toward the cliff face.

  “Pabl?”

  He stopped. “My excuses, Jan. But I cannot tarry in the village with you. I must go to the rock now. I will return in a day or so to let you know when the Fire Bath ceremony will take place.”

  A puzzled look crossed the dwarf’s face, but it soon passed.

  He knew not to question Pabl’s actions. They’d been through much together, and even though Jan did not understand an obsidiman’s relationship with his liferock, he needed no explanation. “We will be at Samson’s Inn,” he said.

  “I will find you there in a few days,” Pabl said. “Goodbye.”