The chief, Thok, let out a series of grunts and scratched his scaly head. He was in the grips of some all-consuming dilemma. “Feast,” he announced. “Boil them all.”
This was welcome news. The chief was off his diet, and they would be spared the agony of being flayed alive before they were eaten.
“Remember your diet,” the chieftess chimed in.
If Caroc could have cursed her, he would have.
The chief went back to his thoughtful pose. “Skin ‘em, and no butter in the sauce,” he sighed.
“The woman was carrying this,” a toadok guard said laying the staff reverently at the chief’s feet.
The chieftess wobbled over to it, tried to bend to reach it, and gave up. “Give it to me,” she ordered. The guard, younger and more agile, lifted up the staff and passed it to her.
She spat on the onyx and rubbed it with her filthy dress until it shone like a black star. She paraded around the tent to the cheers of the guards and chief. If ever she found out what power she held in her hand, Caroc knew Wichsault’s doom would be sealed.
The toadok guards ushered them outside, and as they ducked under the tent flap Thok called out, “On second thoughts keep the butter.”
The butcher’s tent was as hot and stifling as a glasshouse. In the centre stood a table so blood-splattered Caroc thought at first it was painted red. A variety of skinned and dismembered animals dripped their remaining fluids from racks ranged around the perimeter onto the offal-strewn floor. Squirming through the medley were maggots as large as eels.
The guards dumped them into this carrion stew.
“What have we got here?” the butcher asked. He had an unusually large head and a single cloudy eye. The other had been gouged out leaving a festering wound that oozed a custard-like fluid.
“Two humans and some kind of demon, he’s small and plump, should make good eating. The chief wants ‘em all skinned and walked to the pot,” one of the guards replied holding his hand to his mouth. Caroc wasn’t the only one appalled at the stench. The butcher grinned at the request and ran his hand along an assortment of blades that hung on a belt around his waist. He pulled out a thin, curved knife with a hook on the end.
Caroc realised with a stab of guilt Nessa had been in this very tent, alone, subjected to the cruelty of this sadist. Now he’d brought another innocent woman to him.
“Never skinned a demon before,” the butcher said sloshing his way over to his three victims.
He stooped and ran his thick, calloused hands over the three captives to decide which was the most demonic. Caroc realised the butcher’s remaining eye was useless.
The butcher went to work, cutting and pulling. He was a master. Szat’s skin came off in one piece. Caroc had tried that with an apple once but had not had any success.
The demon looked unchanged without his blister-red epidermis. The butcher slung the skin over a rack to dry like washed laundry and hauled Morwen onto the table.
Caroc strained against his immobility. He desperately wanted to save Morwen from a fate like Nessa’s, but all he could do was form his mouth into a grimace and make a low growling sound.
The butcher cut off the warlock’s robe.
Caroc didn’t think it appropriate, but he couldn’t help but marvel at Morwen’s toned physique. Her creamy skin was flawless, marred only by her many scars. He would never have guessed such a beautiful body pulsed beneath her robe.
The butcher made an incision below Morwen’s clavicle. “Such soft skin,” the butcher said pausing to stroke it. “It will make a wonderful negligee for the chieftess.” The blood dribbled down between Morwen’s breasts and pooled in her belly button.
Morwen whispered a single word, “Kroduv.” The shadows in the room were sucked into her and left in their place a formless, grey gloom. “Birm,” she said. A jet of black shadow shot from her hand into the butcher’s face snapping his neck back with a crack and sending his body catapulting across the tent.
Morwen and Caroc lay sprawled in the putrefying slops, willing their movement to return. Their eyes were focused on the tent’s entrance, fearful they would be fetched for dinner before the paralysis passed.
Szat was the first to rise. He pulled his skin off the rack and stepped back into it as if dressing for the day. He then made his way from carcass to carcass, sampling each and commenting on its taste before settling upon what appeared to be a duck with arms instead of wings.
“Demons are nearly impossible to kill,” Morwen said, noting Caroc’s incredulous stare. “Slice and dice them and they can stick themselves back together. I remember once chef chopped off Szat’s fingers and threw them away when he tried to snatch a roast chicken. We had to search through the kitchen trash for hours to find them again.”
“The toadoks would have got a fright when they tried to boil me,” Szat chuckled. “I’m heat resistant too remember.” He hadn’t quite put his skin back on correctly, and it billowed under his arms and sagged below his buttocks. There were a few tears too, but they would mend themselves.
“Thank you,” Caroc said. The feeling was returning to his limbs. He propped himself up on his elbows. His neck, too numb to support his head, rested on his chest as if he were asleep. Morwen was still unable to move. “I shouldn’t have brought us here,” he said.
“You had to, the justiciar instructed us. The toadoks are a constant threat and need to be eradicated.”
“I ought to have come alone then, not been such a coward.” He pushed himself up onto his knees then rose unsteadily. “I aim to set that right.” He stumbled as his legs trembled and was forced to rest his hand on the bloody table until his strength returned. Using one of the butcher’s knives, he cut a flap at the back of the tent. Outside there were only trees. He dressed Morwen in her torn robe, and too weak to carry her over his shoulder, he dragged her from the tent and into the forest. Szat insisted on a ride, sitting on Morwen’s belly and munching on the revolting carcass he’d found on the butcher’s slab. They went unchallenged, the toadoks too busy preparing for the feast.
Caroc made a lean-to shelter of branches and leaves and hid Morwen beneath. The warlock was still having difficulty moving. It would take a small body like hers some time to neutralize the poison from the toadoks’ darts. It was a wonder she’d managed to mutter the spell that saved them—a testament to her inner strength.
“I’m going back to the village,” Caroc announced.
“Why?”
“To do something I should have done a long time ago.”
Morwen managed a half smile. “Okay.”
“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met,” Caroc said and disappeared into the creeping twilight.
It didn’t take long to find the plant he wanted, pale red leaves with dots in the middle. Killer’s eye, one leaf was enough to kill a grown man a dozen times over. He stuffed his pocket with a fistful of the leaves and continued to the village.
The butcher’s tent was as they had left it, and there was no commotion outside except for the excited murmurings of the toadoks gathered around the great pot. It would not be long, though, before one of them poked its head inside the tent and asked what the holdup was.
He stripped off his clothes and squatted beside the butcher. Choosing a serrated blade from the butcher’s own knives, he sawed into the meaty neck and opened up the throat. The blood had already started to thicken and oozed out the wound like raspberry jam. Caroc scooped it up and smeared it over himself, careful not to leave even an inch without the sticky coating. The illusion complete—he’d been skinned alive—he retrieved the poisonous leaves from his pocket and clasped them tightly in his fist.
He took a deep breath and smiled. He hadn’t felt this alive since…since the toadoks had captured him and Nessa all that time ago. “For Nessa, for the man I was.” He walked from the tent, head held high.
The whol
e village was assembled in the village square, at least two thousand toadoks. Luckily, the cooking pot was huge, roomy enough to boil twenty men inside. The chief was there. His chair had been dragged from his tent, and at his side was his grotesque wife. She was holding Morwen’s staff, the shiny onyx reflecting the firelight. The chief’s eyes glittered as much from the flame as his greed. Cheers rang out; dinner had at last arrived. Caroc waved, and the toadoks waved back.
They were too stupid or too hungry, he surmised, to question why he walked to the pot unaided, as if it were a privilege to be eaten. They might wonder where Morwen and Szat were in time, but Caroc did not think it would affect his plan.
He ran. He wanted this to be over and done with as soon as possible—he wanted to redeem himself. When he got closer to the fire, he broke into a sprint and vaulted into the pot with a splash. The pot overflowed into the fire nearly extinguishing it, but after a hiss and a cloud of steam it came back to life.
The pain Caroc felt was unimaginable, despite himself he cried out and tried to scramble from the pot. A beautiful face with emerald green eyes and auburn hair beamed at him, Nessa. He sank back into the pot and closed his eyes. His buttocks and feet rested on the bottom. There were other dead animals down there with him. He felt their soft-boiled bodies bump against his. Caroc released the leaves from his hand. They floated to the surface. He drifted with them, beyond the pot and into the starry sky.
Morwen woke to the song of an early bird and the memories of the previous day’s horrors. She could move her left hand; that was something. As she’d expected, Caroc hadn’t returned. Szat was still asleep. He’d finished gnawing on the carcass overnight, and his head rested on its ribcage.
She poked him. “I don’t know how we’re going to do it but we need to get my staff back.”
The village was quiet, a wisp of smoke from the fading embers of the fire snaked into the clear blue sky. Strewn around the village, the toadoks lay stiff and cold, children still grasping onto their mothers in their death agonies. A human’s bones lay in a pile near the pot.
Morwen threaded her way through the bodies and peered inside the pot. A thick brown sludge filled the bottom. Waves of nausea swept over her. She knew what Caroc had done. He’d sacrificed himself to poison the village—claim his revenge for the death of Nessa and rid the world of the monstrous toadoks forever. It had been a noble sacrifice.
She found the king sitting in his chair with his mouth wide open as if he were trying to swallow the moon. The chieftess was slumped over his lap, the staff clasped in a tight fist. Morwen wrested it free.
“Where’s Caroc?” a familiar voice said.
She turned around. Goron smiled in greeting. Szat had pushed the pot over and lapped at a brown puddle. “Szat’s eating the last of him now. I better get working on an antidote.”
Morwen didn’t ask where Goron had been, and he didn’t tell her. Seemingly it was as if nothing had happened since he’d gone missing that night.
The forest was changing, surrendering to the swamp. The thinning ruinwood trees were replaced by weeping willows, bald cypresses, the base of their trunks enlarged and bulbous, and paper birches. Goron amused himself by tearing at their paper-like bark with childish glee and scrunching it up in his huge hands.
The birdsong switched from persistent chatter to mournful wails that ended in a squawk as if the bird, in deep depression, had thrown itself off a branch to its death. Morwen searched the foliage above until she finally spotted the culprit, a black-feathered bird with milky-white eyes and a stooped posture.
The soggy ground sucked at her feet. With each step, she sank up to her knees in the viscous mud. Morwen couldn’t get used to the smell of the swamp. The stench, like sodden laundry souring for days in the damp and darkness, lived in her nostrils. There were plenty of insects too. Mosquitos were the most irritating with their swollen abdomens, and a buzz that sounded like a whimpering dog. “I don’t like it here,” she said.
“Who would?” Goron replied.
“I do. These lizards are delicious,” Szat said nibbling on a charred water dragon impaled on a stick. The demon had found a constant supply of the creatures. They sunned themselves in the shafts of sunlight warming the trunks of the trees, unconcerned with Morwen’s and Goron’s presence—sitting ducks for a fireball. Goron kindly skewered them on sharp twigs for the demon.
On the second day, they came to a lake that stretched to a distant shore lined with pines. Beyond the trees the faraway outline of a mountain range was visible through the flimsy clouds. Neither of the travellers had ever seen such a large body of water other than the sea. They stared in wonder at the surface, as still as glass, reflecting a sky the colour of cold iron.
At the water’s edge stood a stone as tall as Goron. Both he and Morwen were drawn to the rough-hewn monument. One of the sides had been smoothed and a series of hieroglyphs etched upon its surface. Morwen ran her fingers over the symbols faded by centuries of harsh weather. Apparently sacrificial victims—buxom maidens—were once tethered to the stone for the pleasure of some gargantuan denizen of the lake.
“A charybdis,” Morwen exclaimed.
“A toadok god?” Goron asked pulling a face as he peered at the carved picture of a mass of blubber and tentacles.
“No, the toadoks were too stupid to write. Someone else long ago must have worshipped it.”
“It was the Javaites. The charybdis was their god and if they didn’t make a yearly sacrifice, the charybdis would destroy their village,” Szat said.
“How do you know that?” Morwen asked. She’d had the demon for only four years, and there was much she didn’t know about his previous life.
“I lived among them, of course.”
“Fascinating,” Goron said dropping his pants.
“What! What are you doing?” Morwen asked.
“Going for a swim.” Goron finished undressing and cannonballed into the water.
“Aren’t you worried about the charybdis?” Goron was being either very stupid or very brave. She suspected the former.
“That was long ago, you said so yourself, and even if the creature still exists, I’m hardly his type.” Goron pretended he was a water fountain.
Large bubbles erupted from the surface of the lake near the centre. The ripples washed towards Goron as he stopped larking around and sped from the water. “It’s getting a bit chilly,” he said as he dashed past Morwen.
It was late in the afternoon. The sun was dipping below the trees and neither of them fancied walking any farther. They set up camp on a ledge nestled into the hollow of an outcrop of rock overlooking the lake.
Goron had replenished his supplies from the pack Caroc had left in the toadoks’ camp, and they supped on dried beef and hardtack. The lake was lost in the darkness of a cloudy night, but Goron stared in that direction throughout the meal. Morwen sat quietly beside him and chewed her meal thoughtfully.
“He had no choice you know. You needed your staff, and he needed his vengeance,” Goron said. They hadn’t talked about Caroc’s death, but Szat had filled in all the details for Goron as he rode on the massive warrior’s shoulder.
Morwen reddened at the observation. It was true. She was thinking about Caroc again. He hadn’t left her mind since he’d walked off into the camp to seek his revenge. Why did it haunt her? She never cared enough about others before to give their deaths a second thought, and in many cases she’d even been the cause.
The ranger’s tragic story of lost love had touched her. “Don’t you think I know that?” she snapped.
“Good, and how are you feeling?” Goron replied undeterred.
Morwen had crushed calendula and marshmallow root into a paste and smeared it on her and Goron’s many injuries. She could feel the familiar itchiness as they started to heal. It was the damage inside her Goron was referring to. Even though Morwen had been taking a knife t
o herself since she’d become a warlock, what had transpired in the butcher’s tent had terrified her. She wanted to tell Goron of her panic, and how frightening it was knowing you were about to be skinned alive, and how she could not stop thinking about Caroc’s death. But the idea appalled her. She couldn’t tolerate that weakness within herself and could never divulge it to others. Instead, she muttered she was fine and turned over on her bed of stone to show Goron her back.
Goron took first watch. The night was dark, the moon a slither above the tree line, the stars smudges of dirty light. The only sound was the occasional whine of a mosquito and the faint lapping of the lake at its banks.
Bored with the darkness, his mind turned inwards to the memories of the carnal delights he’d experienced with the forest goddess. He caught himself grinning despite his earlier resolution. Disgusted, he promised himself no matter what exquisite goddess emerged from the lake, he wouldn’t be tempted.
He felt responsible for what happened to Morwen, and he couldn’t leave her again. Besides, she’d changed. He could see Caroc’s death, and what had happened in the toadoks’ camp had affected her deeply. Morwen’s vulnerability touched him, and he saw her in a new light.
A piercing scream jerked Goron from his thoughts. He jumped to his feet and drew his axe as he looked toward the camp where Morwen was sleeping.
The night exploded in flame. Panicking, Szat was hurling fireballs haphazardly. Sparks rained down like fiery snow. Blubbery tentacles as thick as tree trunks whirled in the air. One was coiled around Morwen. Only her head was visible, mouth stretched in a blood-curdling scream.
A tentacle thumped Goron on the back and sent him crashing to the ground. He staggered to his feet, clasping his head. Momentarily disoriented, he heard Morwen’s screams echo all around him.
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