- -
- 100%
- +
“Well? Did it help? You like that? Want another?” I remembered how Er had cowered before the goat-bearded creature. “Come on! You’ll be the one explaining it to the dark one. I don’t remember a damned thing. Let’s do it. I can keep going. Come on, let’s kill ourselves.”
“Cannot kill self. You right. Must find other way.”
We sat beside the rock in silence, hating each other. I also tried to understand what sort of lunacy was happening, and the splitting pain in my skull did not help. I cannot say how long we sat there, but it felt like an eternity. Even the insects that had fallen silent during our battle with the rock began circling above the grass again.
Then satisfied shouts shattered the quiet. Strange green-skinned creatures emerged among smaller gray beings with large pointed ears.
I rolled onto my stomach and hid, uncertain how to react.
“Those orcs. Small ones goblins. Meat tough and stinky. Not so good as pink-skins, but stop hunger. Me want eat,” Er said, awakening inside me.
Several dozen newcomers settled at the edge of the woods. They dropped bundles from their hips and bags from their shoulders, then began cutting dry trees and fallen branches for a fire.
While I was still trying to understand what was happening, Er seized control of our body.
The troll sprang to his feet and charged. One tremendous punch drove the nearest orc into the ground. The others scattered. Only one raised an ax and attacked. The enormous weapon nearly ended my journey, scraping across our skin. The orc cried out—perhaps a battle cry, perhaps a spell.
Er froze.
I had no desire to die. Instinct took over.
My instinct.
I slipped aside and drove a knee into the overextended orc. Ribs cracked. The strength of the troll’s body was colossal. When the strangers saw that their chieftain’s magic had failed, they abandoned their burdens and fled in every direction.
Er stirred inside me, grumbling with annoyance.
“You useful after all. Me cannot fight shaman spell. You split him quick, save hide, find breakfast.”
With practiced ease, Er tore an arm from the fallen orc’s shoulder and began eating it like a chicken leg.
I shuddered.
Er suppressed my urge to vomit.
“You foolish. Meat good. Meat make strong.”
Our teeth tore away a substantial piece of flesh and began to chew.
But it doesn’t have to be raw.
“Me always eat while warm. Dead meat cold and tough.” Er tore away another juicy mouthful. An almost animal pleasure spread from our filling stomach through the rest of the body. “You get used to it. Troll not eat grass. We not cows.”
“There have to be other ways,” I protested.
Our argument was interrupted without ceremony.
“Ways to do what?” A strange hum and flutter sounded beside our ear.
The troll swatted at it. The nimble little flyer simply hovered beside the other ear.
“A way to do what? And I’ve certainly never seen a troll who could speak, much less one who talks to himself.”
“My neighbor not like troll food,” Er replied while I tried to determine who owned the thin little voice and waved at the creature circling our head.
“Stop that. I am neither a fly nor a gadfly. I am grateful that you chased off the kidnappers who stole me from the people who had already captured me, but don’t expect too much gratitude. I escaped the cage myself, so technically speaking—”
“You can split me and loud horrible talker? Maybe then me not obey goat-beard. Me go back cave and sleep.”
“Talker? Split you? Where is he?”
“Cursed body-thief climb in my head and not leave.”
“Now that is interesting. I thought your tribe was close to extinction, and here I find two at once—in the same body.” Her voice buzzed beside our other ear.
“Not two. Me troll. Me Er. Talker not troll. He remember nothing, not even name. Show up this morning. Wake me almost noon. Think and think and think. Me afraid head burst.”
“For your information, I didn’t ask to be here!” I began.
Er parried neatly.
“If you remember nothing, how you know? Maybe you ask. Maybe goat-beard put you here to punish me.”
“I don’t know. I remember nothing before today. I only know I lost something important, and it left a hole in my heart.”
“Only one thing can leave a hole in the heart,” the little voice chirped to the beat of fluttering wings.
“What thing?” I felt curiosity awaken inside Er.
“Angels call it heaven’s delight. Demons call it hell’s torment. Only humans—”
The troll’s lips lacked the necessary flexibility. I strained, forcing the tongue to obey. Slowly, clumsily, we managed to pronounce the word.
“Love,” I finished.
“Love,” the little voice echoed. “But love is not always a reward.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Humans. Those are man-things?” Er cut in. “If you know their name humans, then you also Man. Sneaky little man climb into my ear while me sleep. Or you wizard who shot biting smoke at me by village last night? Come out!”
Er roared and prepared to smash our head against the nearest boulder. Fortunately for him, the clearing was littered with them.
“What?” the owner of the tiny voice whispered in horror.
“You deaf? If wings not rustle, you hear everything. You buzz by ear like mosquito.”
“Let me speak to the Man.”
The girl’s words offended Er deeply. He bellowed.
“The Wheel of Samsara has almost stopped,” she said. “Human souls have nearly ceased returning to the world.”
The buzzing fell silent. A tiny girl dressed in flower petals landed on the stone beside the stump, dragonfly wings rising from her back.
“Seven of every eight newborns have no soul. They are born dead. An epidemic of stillbirths is the scourge of these lands. Please don’t be angry. Let me speak to your guest. It is terribly important. Please.”
She pressed her hands together as if in prayer and bowed her red head.
“You not bland. You know respect. Me agree.”
Pleased with himself, Er withdrew into the depths of our subconscious, leaving me alone with the outer world and the strange little girl.
“Is it true?” the flower fairy asked, her voice trembling. “Everything Er said—is it true?”
I nodded with the head Er and I shared.
“It’s true. I remember nothing. Absolutely nothing. As if I never existed before today.”
The girl peered into the troll’s eyes and chanted:
The vicious circle of the ages
An unbidden guest shall break.
In another’s shape
He shall come into the light.
Through love
He shall shatter
The chains of all creation.
The veil shall fall,
The roads shall open,
And a singing voice shall guide the lovers
To the Everlasting Rose…
“What Rose?” I asked. “Goat-beard kept talking about some flower too.”
“He really is from the humans. A true Man, if he knows nothing of the Windblown Flower,” Er grumbled from his hiding place.
I could almost hear gears grinding inside our skull as the troll attempted to think.
“That why orc spell not work on you.”
“Call me Man if you want.”
I turned to the tiny winged fairy.
“And who are you? I don’t remember you either.”
“I am a woodland fairy. Since you rescued me, I owe you a life-debt. In your terms, that makes me your guardian angel—and, while I’m at it, your conscience.”
“Go away. Not now. No need conscience. No time for you. Man broke memory. Must fix. You interfere,” Er complained.
“And how exactly do you intend to repair a memory?” A delightful, mocking smile flashed across the winged girl’s face.
“Memory in head,” the troll growled. “Me hit head on rock and remember how fix memory.”
The woodland fairy scarcely had time to open her mouth before the troll smashed his head with all his strength against an enormous boulder on the riverbank.
The stone split with a crack beneath the monstrous blow.
“Why is your answer to everything hitting your head against a rock?” I snapped at Er.
“Me help, Man. So you leave sooner. Besides, me always do this when forget thing.”
We collapsed onto our backside. My skull rang like a church bell. The beast rubbed the swelling lump on our forehead.
“Did it work?” the fairy asked sweetly.
The blue monster shook his head.
“Not work. Head hurt worse. But pain here gone.”
I pointed at our chest.
“What hurt there?”
“Not hurt. Empty. Man lose more than memory.” Er’s voice suddenly grew sad. “Troll think that memory… but memory should be in head.”
Er rose and scratched the back of our skull thoughtfully.
“We can puzzle that out later,” the fairy said irritably. “You truly remember nothing?”
“Me remember everything. Man remember nothing.” Er shook our head. “Three moons ago Goat-beard come. Say me his servant and must obey. Then he cure my wife, and she birth proper heir. Gods’ punishment touch us too. He send me to village of man-things. Tell me smash and rage. Give soul-crystal, tell me gather dead souls inside—especially human females and little children. Then he make medicine from fear and pain for soul of my heir.”
Er stood.
“In our mountains, only troll with heir is true troll. More offspring, more respect from other trolls. Me and wife try seven times. Seven times she give birth to dead stone.”
Burning, unbearable pain filled the troll’s mind and cut into me like a knife. His suffering was immense. Despair and hope had driven this strange creature into his bargain with Goat-beard.
For an instant, the monster’s dreams opened before me.
A cave. Coals crackling in a hearth at the center of the grotto. A troll woman working at a stone butchering slab. Er sitting close to the fire, telling stories to their children.
The vision vanished.
“By village there were men on stallions, all in iron, no flavor at all. They throw biting wood at me from strange…” Er fell silent, searching for words.
“Show me. Maybe I can help,” I said quietly.
“How you help if remember nothing? Fine.”
Er concentrated. An image formed in my mind: a man clad in plate armor, holding a crossbow.
“Those are bolts. Crossbow arrows.”
“Sneaky liar. You know man-thing weapons?”
“I’m not lying. You showed me, and I remembered.”
“That can happen with amnesia,” the fairy said.
Amnesia is a loss of memory resulting from trauma or some other incident, knowledge surfaced in my mind.
Er spoke it aloud.
The winged girl stared at us in shock.
“How do you possess the knowledge of demiurges? What are you?”
“Head empty like drum. Then Man remember. Bearded one tell him, ‘Not human anymore.’”
“Which means I used to be one. But I broke it,” I added, slowly growing accustomed to the way Er’s vocal cords interpreted my thoughts.
“Who are your demiurges?”
“You not butt in when me talk to conscience,” Er growled and punched our own body.
It dawned on me that this had become the same contest males of every race and species eventually reduced themselves to: comparing cocks.
Without hesitation, I threw us flat on the ground. The impact drove the air from our lungs, and rings—or perhaps stars—swam before our eyes.
“You two are going to kill each other,” the girl cried in alarm. Power entered her voice. “The dark one will be delighted. Do you want to remain his slaves forever? Through every incarnation, across a thousand worlds and ten thousand lives, you would never wash away that brand.”
Her words struck us like a bucket of cold water.
“Perhaps fate gave you this ordeal for a reason. And instead of helping one another, you are measuring your little pricks to see whose is longer. The trouble is, you only have one between you. Just as you share one life in this world. You had better think about how to mend whatever happened.”
“How can I mend it when I can’t even remember what I broke? I remember nothing. Not who I am, not where I am. Not even my name.”
“Why do you need an old sound? I am Er. You are Man.”
“Then I shall call you Luder,” the fairy said. “In the southern tongue it means two-natured. Who you choose to be is for you alone to decide. You can remain slaves of the dark one, or live by your own rules. But if you choose freedom, you will have enemies everywhere. No one likes willfulness or disobedience. As for where you are…”
She snorted and shook droplets of water from her wings.
“For you, this is reality. The world in which you will live this lifetime. You are in the Kingdom of Karesia, within the lands of the Duke of Balintia. Why drag yourself into the wilderness of creation?”
“Help me. Just give me the short version. I don’t want to be a pawn in someone else’s game when I don’t even understand the rules.”
I fell silent beneath the fairy’s appraising stare.
“You have a point. Without knowing the rules, you’ll break your neck in no time—and Er’s along with it. That would be a stain on my reputation, since I am your Guardian now.” The fairy scratched the tousled mass of hair atop her head. “You would think nothing could be easier than guarding one of the strongest and nearly indestructible beings on Radeon. But I know someone who may be able to help us.”
“Who?” Er and I asked together.
“The Oracle knows many secrets,” the winged girl squeaked mysteriously.
“But he does not reveal them to everyone,” Goat-beard’s voice said behind us. “A witless brute and a fairy. A most impressive pair. Unfortunately, whoever asks the question must answer the Sphinx’s riddle. He has no chance. Even I would not dare go there. And why should a magical creature meddle in the affairs of lesser mortals? I thought your kind remained neutral.”
“You have no authority to question me. I will answer to the demiurges.”
The fairy planted herself upon the troll’s shoulder, hands on hips.
“So that is how it is.” The bearded shadow stroked his beard. “This creature is not worth the trouble, little one. I am Lord Shazar, the right hand of Kolymar. Even your High One is no equal of mine.”
Darkness filled the demon’s eyes.
“You hold no more power here than I do,” the fairy replied, dispersing the darkness with a snap of her fingers.
“A sorceress so young should not make enemies so powerful,” the dark one hissed.
“It was not my choice. But I will not break my word. I will not surrender Luder to you.”
“Luder? You have already named him? Trolls are not pets. He is accursed, his soul branded by grievous sin. He is mine by definition.”
“If he were truly yours, you would never have released him from the hyena. Out of our way, dark one.”
The voice of a fairy no larger than an ordinary dragonfly carried the power of spring thunder.
“On your knees, Er,” the dark one growled.
But the ogrin shook his bearded head.
“Me not your slave.”
“Then you have made your choice?” Goat-beard asked.
The monster nodded.
“Me choose mend my past. Me not serve you.”
“So be it. Return what is not yours, and our bargain is dissolved. We shall see how this ends.” The dark one smiled. “But remember, blue-skin: my servants live in luxury. They bring down the mighty. They make history. I can give you every treasure in this world—gold, jewels, power.”
“Why troll need those? Me cannot eat them.” Er pulled a blue crystal from his belt and threw it at the dark one. “Troll is man, and man earns respect himself—from gods and kin.”
“I should have left you more brains,” the dark one said bitterly. “I will turn your existence into hell. All Virania will hunt you.”
“Me not need existence. Me want live. Me want…” Er growled.
My thoughts caught upon the strange name of the land. It sounded like a distant echo from a story forgotten long ago.
“You cannot frighten us,” the little fairy interrupted. “You are a common Whisperer, a relic of the Sundering. If the High Circle still existed—”
“How foolish youth can be.” The demon laughed. “I am no mere Whisperer. I am a Tuner of Souls.”
“And yet you have not advanced very far in your calling,” the fairy said. “Seven thousand years across realities beyond counting, and you have proved nothing—to either the Creator or your master.”
The barb struck home. The dark one flew into a rage.
“You will regret your insolence!” he hissed and dissolved into a yellow cloud of sulfurous gas.
“You are brave, Veronica,” I said admiringly.
“More likely foolish, just like you. The entire army of darkness will rise against us. Every mortal corrupted by vice. All the undead and unclean things left from the reign of King Gastan.”
“Me not fear darkness or man-things!” Er roared. “Me agree help Veronica and Man. Me earn respect.”
“Even with you, brave Er, our chances are miserable.”
“But we have a chance,” I cried. “So we have to try.”
“Find lost thing, even if thousand lives.” The troll lumbered toward the forest. “More interesting than serve dark bearded goat. We go your Oracle. Me not know way.”
“Then west. The worlds touch beneath a green ray in the east. If we walk toward sunset, we cannot miss the emerald gleam.”
Luder rose and followed the tiny fairy fluttering ahead of him.
Chapter Fifteen
Lullaby
The torches in the citadel corridors had nearly burned out. Driven on by disappointment, the duke strode through the halls, waking dozing sentries and frightening the bats. Lines from his dream kept circling through his mind:
Once every twenty years, O ravenous fate,
She must bring forth her tribute of blood…
Whose words were they—words as ancient as Tariman itself? And the sorceress’s face emerging from the hieroglyphs, young and infinitely old at once. He tried to banish the vision and concentrate on his surroundings, but the sorceress’s image seemed to haunt him, appearing in every shadow and every dark recess.
Lafren took a captured sword from the wall, a trophy won by one of his ancestors, and tested the blade with a few sharp swings before hacking at the stuffed cave bear nearby. The predator’s straw-packed skull and the thick pole supporting its head were sheared clean through. The steel had kept its edge better than the duke had kept his passion.
The sense of power steadied him, and the visions receded. But he had no desire to return to the bedchamber. He decided to drown his bitterness and disappointment in wine and headed for the cellar.
He had descended only a few steps of the spiral staircase when he caught the painfully familiar scent of essential thistle salt. The ruler stopped and raised his sword. He would have recognized that fragrance even amid all the perfumes in a shop during a scented-water sale.
“Thistle,” Lafren whispered.
That was how the linens had smelled in the old temple where an aged hermit had brought him when Lafren was still little more than a boy.
The citadel’s wine cellar rivaled the vaults of the High Temple in size: the same enormous casks built into the walls, the same racks of bottles and amphorae, the same smells of wood and damp. There was no counting the hours Lafren had spent in such labyrinths during his apprenticeship.
His mentor’s favorite punishment had been war against the rats. The offending novice was given nothing but a stick. Utter darkness, narrow passages, claws scraping over stone—once the mentor’s footsteps faded into the black, the mind could conjure any horror it pleased.
Lafren shuddered at the memory of the dungeon’s brazen little mistresses brushing cold against his skin. Yet that ordeal had cured the future paladin of his fear of the dark. Before long, the seven-year-old boy had learned to strike by sound and find his way by touch. The cellar had first become his punishment, then his refuge, and finally his domain. Sometimes he even misbehaved on purpose just to return to the darkness. Down there he was no clumsy little boy. Down there, he was lord and master.
The rats soon learned that the scent of thistle meant death. The paladins of the order used essence salt as a ward, though in truth it was merely a by-product left over from making the fragrant water that sold faster than it could be bottled. And how many cuts and scrapes had gathering it in the Baniada Mountains left on his skin? Too many to count.
But even that was not what mattered.
It was how his mother had smelled on her final day.
She had poured an entire vial of the impossibly expensive distillate over Lafren, locked her son in the cellar, and ordered him to keep silent—no matter what he heard.
The storm had been unlike anything the world had ever seen. It seemed the heavens themselves were cracking beneath the torrents of lightning. Thunder shook the walls. The tempest had caught the king’s cousin and his family at a hunting lodge on their way to the capital. Rain lashed down as if the gods had once again decided to wash every living thing from the face of Izendar.
Warriors and courtiers alike had huddled around the old hearth, whose flames warmed the house and gave them the light of hope. Lafren, only five years old, pressed himself against his mother. Dismissing the nursemaid, she lifted her son into her arms.
“Everything will be all right. It’s only a storm,” the princess whispered like a prayer as she rocked him, and Lafren almost believed her.
Almost.
An agonized scream outside heralded the arrival of a new disaster. His father drew his weapon and rushed out, the guards racing after him. Soon Uvandi’s battle cry drowned beneath the roar of the rain. Steel rang. Mortally wounded men screamed. Yet every sound dissolved into a strange noise like pigs feeding noisily at a trough.
The princess held her son tighter.
“Whatever happens, whatever you hear, you must stay quiet. All right? We’ll play a game, you and I. Would you like that?”
But Princess Katatida’s blue eyes were grave. Lafren nodded.
She drew an emerald vial on a fine gold chain from beneath her dress.
“I’m going to sprinkle you with a magic potion. It will turn you to stone, and you must sit very still and quiet, like a mountain. Then I’ll go find Papa and ask him to look for you. If you win, we’ll travel to Borona this summer, and I’ll let you choose a real dagger. Do we have a bargain?”
Young Lafren nodded again. For the dream of owning a true weapon, he would have done anything.
His mother pulled aside a reed mat and raised the cellar hatch. Drops of the “magic” potion spattered the boy. Only years later did he realize it had been nothing more than distilled thistle water. But then—then he still believed in fairy tales.
Mastering his fear of the dark and warming his heart with dreams of Boronan steel, the prince climbed down beneath the floor and froze. He sat in silence, motionless, scarcely daring to breathe. The noise and desperate screams above seemed part of a children’s game—until his mother cried out and something heavy fell across the hatch.
For a long while afterward, something above clawed at the floorboards. Lafren even smiled, thinking his father was trying to frighten him into giving himself away with a scream. Then something began dripping from overhead, and the cramped cellar, crowded with barrels, filled with a hideous smell and the metallic taste of blood.
Still, the dream of possessing his own treasure kept his heart warm.
And darkness closed his eyes.
No one knew how long the boy remained in that cellar. There had been everything: animal terror, the thought that they had simply forgotten him, futile attempts to lift the hatch himself. Everything except noise and screams.
Because Lafren had promised.
He had nearly surrendered to despair and sat with his eyes shut when voices sounded outside again. He flinched, struck one of the clay pots, and sent it crashing onto the stone floor. A heartbeat later, brilliant sunlight blinded him. Strong hands lifted him from his prison—the hands of his future mentor, Grammaton cleric of the High Temple, master of sword and prayer, Sir Ulric.
The soft melody of a song broke through his memories.
The duke’s footsteps became soundless. He raised his sword and moved toward the music. He could not make out the words, only a low, lilting tune. Ten paces farther on, candlelight flickered behind a cask and water splashed.
Lafren sprang into the light.