by Ember Lane
Merl trailed his finger over a broad, waxen leaf. The air became humid. His finger traced a path through the leaf’s sweat as more dripped down from above. The jungle’s canopy began stifling all light, and an eerie emerald haze spread around them. The trees were strange, their trunks banded, like they’d grown in spurts, and their leaves spreading at high level as if the jungle floor revolted them. Vividly colored flowers spiraled up, clearly desperate for attention, and tiny birds with long, thin beaks like stilettos dipped their heads inside. Frank had Scaramanza in his hand and was busy hacking a path through. Sweat dripped from him, and his breaths soon became labored.
“This is heavy going,” he said.
Billy had his troll hammer back in his hands, and Merl held the firestone axe. After several turns, Frank soon stopped for a rest.
“I know what killed them all,” he said. “It wasn’t the seers. It was getting to the bastards.”
“You never said nothin’ about killed, Witchy!” Billy exclaimed.
“Just a turn of phrase, Billy.” Frank bent double, gasping for air.
Merl barged past the man. He calmed his mind and began swinging his axe. At first, he made little headway. The thick leaves snagged his blade, folding around its shaft and yanking at it. Long, skinny, tubular stalks vibrated, deflecting the ax’s head and nearly embedding the blade in his shins. But he slowly worked each type of plant out, striking where it was weakest, angling the blade just so. Merl fell into a rhythm. Sweat drenched his brow. His hair stuck to his face, but none of it worried him as he forged a path through the jungle and farther into the island.
He nearly missed the first tug at his mind. In fact, if it hadn’t been for it also grasping at his stomach and pulling his gut forward, he would have missed it in its entirety. But pull at his stomach it did, and it infused not only fear but also tremendous respect.
“Somethin’s up,” he muttered to himself as he slowed his stroke and took a moment to try and assimilate the feelings that rippled through him.
The next tug was sharper, like a needle jabbing in his ear and then sucking at his brain. He staggered sideways and nearly lost his grip on the swinging axe. Stopping, taking a moment, taking a breath, he understood.
“Get ready!” he shouted, raising his firestone axe high.
“For what, Merl?” Frank said. The wizard came alongside him, Scaramanza at the ready.
“The seer’s test,” Merl hissed, legs bent, eyes wide.
Gloomy Joe growled.
For a second, a jungle’s silence fell—quietness punctuated by a hundred different sounds—rustling, tearing, chomping, stretching, snuffling and shuffling—but then the screeching started. Raking screams so sharp they made Merl wince suddenly pierced the air. Calls of alarm sounded that pitched high, then staggered down, then jumped back to crescendo before plunging to slam shut.
“Monkeys!” Frank shouted. “Mad monkeys.”
The creature’s alarmed call was all about. Cracking branches, flattened undergrowth, the other sounds of destruction came closer. The piercing calls grew louder, like an unseen avalanche hurtling toward them from every direction. Distinct voices screamed first, their mimicked call rippling around. The maddened, crazed beasts circled them in a coordinated frenzy. Merl’s heart beat faster and faster. His breaths became shallow, getting stuck in his throat and hardly reaching his lungs. Sickness washed over him, the type of sickness the unknown brings. Merl gripped the firestone axe hard, but his hands shook. He adjusted his stance, but his knees were trembling. His tongue dried. The fear of what was to come cowed him. Redoubling his determination, urging calm into his mind, Merl emptied his lungs with a defiant scream, and as if on cue, the maddened monkeys broke through the walls of green.
They had fire-red eyes, and their fanged teeth were bared, lips peeled back. Bright white incisors, bloodied with frenzy, appeared ready to rip flesh. Heads jolted around, blood eyes searching for prey and settling when they found it. Each beast was as big as Merl and had ranging arms. Curled yellow claws sprouted from thick-skinned hands.
Merl struck. The ruby gems of his ax’s head carved a crimson arc from over Merl’s shoulder all the way to a raging monkey’s neck. The monkey ducked, raising a hairy arm to defend itself. Merl’s axe sliced through, severing its arm at the elbow. Blood spewed. Red blood, healthy crimson gouts that sprayed with high. Merl winced, but then the side of his face exploded as the monkey’s other hand, bunched to a cruel fist, pummeled him and sent him flying into the close, sweaty folds of the thick jungle undergrowth. The beast stood over him, blood still pumping from its useless stump. It grabbed Merl by the scruff of his tunic and launched him high.
Frank’s grim face crossed his panicked vision. The Wizard of Quintz was embroiled in his own battle. Scaramanza chopped, though the blade ineffectual in the pressing jungle. Monkeys surrounded him, paying no heed to the majestic sword.
Billy Muckspreader’s troll hammer thumped the ground, crushing a feeble ribcage that dared get in its way. Billy had a grim look about him. A bloody welt on his brow told of the closeness of the fight. He raised the hammer again, but a monkey jumped onto his back and pulled him down into the folding, crimson-flecked green.
Merl slammed into a trunk. A dull thud pounded between his ears as his brain shook. Red eyes glared down at him, crammed with hatred and packed with vengeance-filled lust. A beast growled and screeched that manic laughter that tore all around. Quaiyl thumped into it. The construct’s momentum sent the monkey flying from Merl’s line of sight as the undergrowth swallowed both. Merl slid up the tree-trunk, true terror filling him. Desmelda was on the floor. Mushroom was being torn apart. Frank’s hand vanished under three of the maniacal beasts. Gloomy Joe was nowhere to be seen.
“Guardians!” Merl barked. “Kill them all,” he growled.
The guardians appeared, popping into being all around. They had no swords, no bows, nor any shields, but they set about the monkeys with rhythmic, bloody destruction. They tore limbs, blood spouted. They ripped heads, ichor pumped. They snapped spines, and the monkeys collapsed into crippled heaps.
Frank emerged, bloodied and beaten, screaming his battle cry. He glared around, sword in hand, crimson sweat flying from his head. Billy rose up like a waking giant and tossed a dead monkey away. He grabbed his troll hammer, gripping its shaft until his knuckles were white. He darted off into the crimson green with a fearsome battle charge. “Come here, you bastards!” he screamed, then yelled twice more. Desmelda rolled over, springing up and jabbing a monkey in the kidneys, once, twice, and then over and over until her elbow was a blur. She snapped its head as she growled and cursed. Quaiyl returned and stood next to Merl, barely a breath of air separating them.
In panic, Merl scanned the ruined jungle. “Gloomy!” he shouted, as Mushroom pounced on another corpse and sucked its guts dry. “Gloomy!” Desperation filled him. The imminent tsunami of loss roaring toward him. “Gloomy!”
The construct guardians returned, milling around the flattened clearing. Its floor was slick with blood. A pile of monkey corpses soon stacked in a brutal cairn.
“Gloomy!” Merl emptied his lungs as Frank, Desmelda, and Billy joined in.
“Have faith, young pretender…”
Merl’s jaw dropped. The voice differed from the usual one. The quest one was always soft, precise, and sounded like falling snow. This was deep, resonant, and like a cave’s echo.
“Gloomy!” Merl screamed, now even more afraid than he had been.
“Your dune dog is with me. Do you think I would let such a regal beast as this be slaughtered by my own malevolence?”
Merl’s heart stopped. He looked behind himself, to one side and the other, down, even up. “Where are you?” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth to give his words more oomph.
“You know where I am. You know who I am. I will keep Gloomy Joe amused until you come, if you manage it.”
Merl knew immediately that the voice had gone, and he knew it was the seer
—the sightless one.
“What is it Merl?” Desmelda asked.
“The seer’s got Gloomy,” Merl told her.
Mushroom hadn’t fared so well. His cap had great divots raked across it. Several chunks had been bitten from his cap—half-moons all around its edge. He had drained his fill of monkey guts, and now had a small pot-stalk that bellowed a foot or so below his face. He burped as he looked up.
“Gotta say, feel a bit… pukey. Trouble with monkeys, once you drain one, you just gotta drain ‘em all.” He belched again, a real rippler from the bottom of his stalk up.
Billy tore a stinker just after, and Desmelda stomped toward the tower in a huff. “By Andula, I finally get on an epic quest where the fate of the world hangs in the balance, where evil gathers upon the horizon like a brooding storm, and what hand am I dealt?” She pirouetted around, her hands planted on her hips. “Well?”
Billy cracked another, and Mushroom burped once more. Desmelda made some form of guttural noise a little like a puddle being sucked into a hole. Frank started laughing. Merl hated the sound. He hated everything about the island, not least the great tower that stood before them.
It must have been a thousand feet high, at least that’s what it looked like to Merl, although he had little idea exactly what a thousand feet would actually look like. A set of narrow, stone steps wound up the outside dished and worn in the middle. It had no windows, no door led in, and it thrust straight up. Bones poked from the surrounding soil. Old bones, shattered bones—likely the remnants of those who’d been tested before. Merl gulped and dismissed his guardians. He sensed no threat from the tower. He was sure of it, though he had no Gloomy Joe to confirm, no dune dog to growl and alert him.
“The test is climbing the bloody thing,” Frank’s voice grated, and he took a long draft on his water canteen. The sun was relentless, and the heat was intolerable, but at least the humidity had relented. They were above the jungle now, at the highest point of the island, if you discounted the tower’s top.
“Those steps can’t be much more than two feet wide,” Desmelda moaned.
“No way I’m getting up there,” Mushroom said. “Cap’s too big for starter, an’ I haven’t got feet fer seconds. I’ll stick down here, keep guard. Could use yer pipe, Frank.”
“You’ve got no arms,” Frank reminded him.
Mushroom’s cap wilted. He slumped, glancing from side to side. “Guess I’ll have to grow me a pair.”
“I should stay with you,” Desmelda said, quickly—too quickly. “We’ll need to cover our backs.”
“No,” said Merl. “He only had the monkeys—that was it. Frank’s right, this is the real test. This is the one we must pass. Mushroom, you stay. Desmelda, if you don’t come, we both know you’ll regret it forever. Billy, it’s up to you. Frank, you have no choice. I suggest we drink, and then start climbing.” Merl glanced at the sun. “We’ve only got half the day to get to the top.”
Merl noticed everyone looking at him, but he didn’t care. He needed to get to the top. He needed to make sure Gloomy was okay, and if the dune dog wasn’t, he needed to kill the seer. Everything was crystal clear to him. Merl had achieved his calm state again. It was a strange feeling that replaced all the thousands of daily worries that usually weighed down his shoulder. It’s like a comfortable chair, he thought. A nice, comfortable chair by a warm fire.
He climbed the first steps, trailing his hand on the chiseled and mortared gray rock. Flintstone broke up the gray of the mortared rock, and flat slates evened their courses. Merl hesitated a mere five feet up, but only briefly. He turned away from the drop, soaking up the tower’s sturdy brickwork instead. He circled once, twice, more, and climbed on. The periphery of his view changed from an all-consuming green, to green with a belt of yellowy white, to both of those and blue.
His heart beat steadily, but then skipped one beat. The ground was so far away. The trees were just speck. What if the tower falls? As fast as his calm had descended on him, so it fled, and panic came. His nerve, so sure and iron-braced at the bottom, suddenly vanished, and his knees locked his legs straight, as his hands began shaking uncontrollably. Merl realized he couldn’t go up, nor could he turn and retreat. His grip of the wall was feeble, nothing but a scratch of mortar.
Oh, by Andula, what have I done to deserve this?
He sensed no presence behind him, nor any comfort within him. The steps were too narrow. No one should have built this great edifice like it had been. No one should have been made to climb it either. It was simply too hard. Merl gently closed his eyes and tried to recover his breathing. He focused on Gloomy, on his floppy ears and droopy eyes. A king amongst dogs, that is what the seer had said, and that’s what Merl knew to be true. The Wizards of Quintz could keep their blue-haired wolves, their majestic eagles and their fire breathing wyverns. Gloomy was a king amongst them all.
Merl unlocked his stiff legs. He dropped to all fours, and then he continued his climb up. Hand over hand, knee past knee, one step at a time. It was easier with his nose closer to the dished steps. It was how Gloomy would have done it—how the dune dog must have climbed the tower—and now it was how Merl was going to do it.
He didn’t rest, nor did he look behind him, at least not until the first roots dangled by him. At first, Merl thought he was seeing things. He thought that fatigue had got the better of him, and that he desperately needed rest. But when a root brushed his sweat-soaked face, he stopped. Sure enough, roots were dangling, and shade covered him. Then he looked farther out and saw that the roots dangled like he was in an upside-down forest. He chanced an upward glance to see that the tower vanished into a cone of mud and rock that simply couldn’t be there, shouldn’t be there.
Without option Merl continued up. The roots thickened, no longer wispy strands. His mouth was as dry as Two Finger Brook in summer. His mind was awash with confusion. Merl’s hand slipped. His knee fled from under him. His heart stopped as he scrambled, leg dangling, fingers slipping on mirror-polished stone. He lay for a tap, a turn, a little while. Merl tried to calm, but the thought of moving was too much. His cheek rested on the cold stone as he looked out through the draping roots and to a horizon he could plainly see over the storm’s squall, blue against blue.
“Frank? Billy? Desmelda?” he shouted, sensing someone behind him, but he knew it would be Quaiyl, that near enough went without saying.
When he received no reply, he gathered his body up like a marionette was controlling his bones, and Merl began to climb once more. He forced himself on until he was within touching distance of the brown mud and glinting rock. It was cool to the touch, packed solid, and fibrous, like infinite roots held it together. The steps vanished into a small round tunnel. Merl scrambled the last few, urgently seeking the safety of its closed in walls.
Exhausted, Merl twisted around, then took a seat and looked down. Quaiyl walked up, skipped around him, and stopped. The construct had clearly assessed the threat to Merl and chosen to block any danger that might come from above. Wishing he had a water canteen, Merl began to wonder where the others were. After a while, he shrugged his shoulders and decided that they must be waiting at the bottom—that or they were as slow as hell.
“Frank! Billy! Desmelda!” The thought of them all sitting around the fire pit, mud hut built—while he soldiered up the tower, began to play on his mind. “Slippery bastards.”
But he shrugged again, and he began climbing rather than crawling. His knees clicked, screaming pain from their earlier work. The mud-like cone reminded him of a snapncrack’s nest—the shape was similar, and the snapncrack’s always built around a dangling twig or a branch. As his stomach loosened, his curiosity grew. Just what was this place? What right did it have to cling to the tower? The tower was odd too. As far as Merl could tell, it was solid—no hollow core full of chambers or living quarters—no windows, nothing. Perhaps, he thought, the tower was merely a support, and the mud-cone clinging to it was the pedestal’s top. He continued up, away from
the ever-receding light below.
“This is a test, Quaiyl,” he said, more for the sound of a voice in his ears—something to break the monotony now that his terror of falling to a bone-shattering death had subsided. “The seer is testing us to see if we’re worthy of his time, or something like that. I’m not sure exactly what Desmelda expects to happen. I always thought a seer looked into the future, not at the past. I mean, what good is that? The past’s gone, it’s done and over. If all we’re doing is looking backwards, we’ll probably just end up walking into a wall.”
Quaiyl didn’t reply. Merl knew he probably never would.
It was far easier walking through the spiral-shaped tunnel, although the muddy walls began to crowd him. The light from below fizzled just as the hint of a new one hatched from above. It was a bright light, a white light, and it sprayed along the brown outer walls, urging him toward its salvation. Tiredness spread through Merl, the type that overcomes someone when a task is close to done. His legs became heavy. His head sagged. Slapping his feet on the stone steps, he trudged on. Then a spark of hope ignited within him. Gloomy was close. Merl could sense his little friend.
The light from the end of the tunnel grew from a fine slice into a brilliant white portal. Light streamed in, blinding Merl. Spreading his fingers over his eyes, Merl peeked through glowing, pink flesh. It was like a portal to the Gods, to their playground in the clouds. He picked up his steps, now eager to complete his task—to pass it and earn the seer’s trust—to rescue Gloomy Joe. Yet, it wasn’t his dune dog’s silhouette that shaded the stark white portal, but that of a man. From Merl’s lowly vantage point, the man looked as tall as a Great Red. Merl paused.
“Have you got my dog?”
The shadow didn’t reply. It appeared to have its arms folded and chin tucked in, and its feet and legs appeared vastly out of proportion to the rest of its body. Merl stepped closer, reminding himself over and over that he sensed no malice from the tower, or the strange island that appeared to be attached to its top. An arm shot out from the shadow, its hand pointing at Merl, then flipped over and beckoned him close.