by Nancy Fulda
Twenty feet below, a sounder of wild pigs lay asleep, half-hidden, having rooted beneath patches of wild fungus and plates of spongy lichens. The colossal boars weighed as much as three tons each and stood eight feet at the shoulder. A full-grown boar had a mouth large enough to swallow a man whole; their enormous tusks were as sharp as sabers. The boars were savage hunters, fiercely protective of both their young and the patches of mushrooms in their territory.
An old sow grunted curiously and opened her eyes. Anduval halted, heart pounding. He dared not move. With each step, spirit fungus dislodged from the log and rained down on the wild boars.
He couldn’t see exactly how the tree twisted ahead. He was guided only by the light of a jar filled with tiny glow beetles whose green luminescence carried only a few feet. But Anduval had memorized the trail over the years. The glass mushrooms were about ninety feet ahead, where the boa tree dipped down and touched the forest floor.
Anduval wrapped his hand around his jar, obscuring the light, and waited for the sow to return to sleep.
One slip, and he would fall to the forest floor. The ground was spongy, covered with layers of leaves and old lichens that had rotted here for forty thousand years. He’d probably survive a fall, but not an attack by the boars.
So he held tight. The boles of the boa trees twisted crazily in a tangle, and their foliage in the canopy blocked out the stars, so the forest floor lay in perpetual gloom.
The only sound was the dripping from above—sap falling in an ever-present mist, spiders dropping lifeless from old age. A huge growler swept overhead, uttering a soft rumble as it sought for flying insects. The air smelled of ten thousand varieties of mold.
After long minutes, the even breathing and occasional grunts of pigs assured Anduval that they were dreaming contentedly. Morning was coming, and the pigs would soon waken. Time was short. Anduval would have to sprint back to the palace when he got his prize.
Breathlessly, he inched along in the dark, feeling his way across the log until bones cracked beneath his feet. He pulled out his light. A small, lizard-like creature lay dead on the log, having fallen from the canopy, its wings akimbo. Fungus grew over the body in colored patches, reclaiming the moisture and minerals.
Ahead, water tinkled down the boles of several trees, forming a pool. At the water’s edge, ghostly mushrooms rose up like spears, some to a height of three feet. Anduval raised his light, inched forward, and spotted a mushroom dripping with its own sugary dew. It looked to be newly sprouted, for it was still the color of tinted glass. He pushed his way past older mushrooms, those that had been trampled by pigs or had dried out, and examined the new one closely. He reached into a pocket, drew a harvesting scythe, and slashed through the mushroom’s stalk. Using a wet cloth to lift the mushroom so that it would never have been touched by human hands, he placed the mushroom into a pouch woven from twisted leaves, and smiled. It was a good harvest. He suspected the mushroom weighed seven pounds.
Anduval glanced up, searching for a second mushroom, when he heard a startled grunt at his back. A boar scrambled up from the detritus and let out an angry squeal.
He had been found.
He whirled and raced back toward the bole of his boa. A huge black boar rushed from the darkness. Anduval leaped aside. The boar barreled past and went splashing into the shallow pool.
He lifted his light. The boar squealed in outrage, whirled, and gave chase.
Anduval sprinted where the bole angled up gently. The boar charged, but it could not see in the dark, and it had to take care not to slip.
He realized it had to be following his light. The bole veered left, then right. Below him, wild pigs squealed in anticipation. Seldom did they get fresh meat beyond the occasional insect or worm.
The huge boar grunted and redoubled its speed. Anduval could feel its breath at his back. He reached out and held his light far to his right.
The boar veered toward it—and slid from the damp bole of the tree, just as Anduval had hoped.
The pigs squealed in delight at the fresh meat that thudded down around them.
In a subterranean palace deep beneath the mountainous trees, Anduval arranged his fungi on a platter.
He had three spears of yellowcap, firm and meaty, set beside a clump of ruffled young brain fungus, all in shades of gray with blue fringes. A dozen “black buttons” took up the center of the platter, while his single clear glass mushroom—as long as a baby’s arm—curved around the platter’s rim. Sprinkled over the glass mushroom were tiny “blue dot” mushrooms no larger than grains of sand.
When he felt certain the arrangement would be pleasing, he carried it through the arched alcove and into the dining hall of the Holy Maiden Seramasia.
Other attendants had arrived earlier and placed their offerings upon the table. The offerings included a wide variety of fungi, but Anduval felt certain that they would not please his mistress. The pile of dark green swamp lettuce looked too stale to be appetizing. A single, white sweet globe was overly large, and thus its dark center would be flavorless. Others looked slightly more palatable.
He thought to shove the central platter aside, but he knew it contained the offering of the kitchen steward, and he did not want to get a beating.
Anduval’s offering was last to the table, as he had hoped. His would be the freshest of the fare. But he had to take care to leave soon, for ancient custom dictated that he could never occupy the same room as the maiden or pass within two hundred feet of her.
He set his platter upon the outer edge of the table, hoping that if the holy maiden chanced to circle once, she would be tempted by his offering. The other attendants had all put their platters near the door to the maiden’s meditation chamber, hoping to be first to be seen. But there on the far side of the table, his platter stood alone.
He took one last second to turn his platter, just so, to better display his rare and succulent glass mushroom as he prepared to flee.
Footsteps issued from the maiden’s entrance, and he glanced up.
Terror took him. The holy maiden stood beneath a white marble arch, glorious and resplendent, not twenty feet away. Skraal guards flanked her.
The guards were taller than men. At eight feet, their height was imposing enough, but it was the guard’s reputation that most frightened him: in their zealousness to protect the maiden, they sometimes got rough. The guards were far more powerful than humans. The least touch of a skraal could leave a bruise. Should one of the creatures grasp him, their slender fingers would rip through his flesh as easily as rice paper and would shatter his bones as if they were made from straw.
Trembling, heart pounding, Anduval dropped to his hands and knees and prostrated himself. “Have pity on me,” he cried, “for I am but a foolish child.”
He closed his eyes. He had seen the holy maiden up close, which was forbidden, and he relished that instant. She was naked, for skraal nymphs rarely wore clothes.
She had been beautiful. Though she stood upon two legs, her similarity to humans ended there.
She had no breasts or hair.
Her face had been as white as the petal of a swamp lily, as white as the lining of a cloud, and fleshy around her silver eyes. Her legs and arms were slender. Her abdomen, shaped like an inverted pear, was full and fat.
She had a gracefulness to her, like the elegance of a crane or a roe deer. In the way of skraal nymphs, her oral-dactyls, the fingerlike appendages that shoved food into the vertical slit of her mouth, were clearer than crystal.
He could see little evidence of the wounds she’d received in the cycor attack. She had nearly been killed when the drone ship had dropped its flash-heads and then smashed into the capitol so hard that debris flew up from the far side of the world. Seramasia had been a hundred miles from ground zero, yet the radiation burns had left part of her exoskeleton pitted.
Anduval’s heart pounded, but not from fear. He had seen the holy maiden up close, and he hoped to savor the image.
&nbs
p; Then she spoke, her mouth-fingers playing rapidly, her voice deep and mellow like a woodwind. “Have no fear, frail one,” she said. “Your presence here pleases me. And though you may be young, I believe that you are wise beyond your years—perhaps wise beyond all understanding.”
Anduval braced himself, not trusting ears. Humans were never allowed near skraal nymphs. In all of his life, he had never heard that the maiden had spoken to any human except Magus Veritarnus, a mysterious man who strode through the palace in black robes with his head hunched in thought.
“Now,” she said, “stand before me, and do not avert your eyes. I have questions for you; choose your words well, for I will permit you to continue in my presence only if you speak perfect truth.”
Perhaps at no time in his life had Anduval felt more frightened. Tears flooded his eyes, and his stomach clenched alarmingly. Though he had not eaten since yesterday, he felt that he might vomit on the floor. When he managed to stand, his legs quivered, and it was only with great effort that he stilled them.
He looked up and peered steadily upon the holy maiden. She strode toward him, and her guards stiffened in alarm. Their instinct demanded they protect her. And, like dogs, they wished to lead the way, to stand between her and Anduval, but she brushed them aside.
“My lady, please,” a guard begged. “The danger—”
“There is no danger from this one,” Holy Maiden Seramasia declared. “I sense only . . . devotion.”
As a skraal nymph, Seramasia had powers of the mind that no human could match. She was not mature, and had not therefore transcended, but she could still see into a man’s mind as easily as a child might gawp at tadpoles at the bottom of a clear pool.
Anduval gazed into her eyes. She had four of them, two large ones that peered forward, and two small ones upon her temples. The large ones did not have whites. Instead, they were silver, like the eyes of a fish, and deep in the center was a dollop of light blue, as if from summer skies. The eyes upon the side of her head were dark, like bits of onyx.
He saw now that her skin was not really white. It was gelatinous, almost, and only looked white from a distance, though he could see that it was beginning to harden. Beneath the clear skin, he could make out tiny blue veins. Her muscles, in fact, were opalescent, and her fine bones were as clear as glass.
She smelled sweet and earthy, like vanilla poured over moss.
Anduval had never seen anyone with such breathtaking beauty.
There was movement in the fine musculature of her face, a skraal smile as her lips tightened. “How old are you,” the holy maiden asked, “in human years?”
“I am twelve years and three months,” Anduval answered softly, filled with awe.
“You are young, even for a human. Do you know how old I am?”
“Two hundred seven years, nine months, three days, and almost nine hours,” Anduval answered.
The holy maiden laughed, a clear melodic sound like an oboe. “So perfectly honest. You please me. Your offering pleases me. Did you know that for nearly three months now, I have not eaten from any other platter but yours?”
Anduval fought back the urge to gasp. He’d never known what had become of his offerings. Each morning and evening he delivered his platter, but at the end of her meal, all of the offerings were thrown away. “I am honored,” was all he could manage to say.
“Three months,” she said. “Since the attack, your offerings have revived me and healed me.”
She gestured at his platter. As a nymph in the early stages of her life, she could not eat anything but fungus. “Your yellowcaps, so bright and crisp. These ones sprouted in the night. You had to have harvested them well before dawn, before any sunlight could beat down through the swamps and touch them. And this glass mushroom—you had to travel miles into the forest to find it, for the steward tells me that the nearest ones grow only at the base of Mount Dimlock.”
Now she peered into his eyes. “You know my tastes—my needs—better than I know them myself. How did you guess that I craved glass mushrooms?”
For a moment, Anduval stood frozen as he tried to choose his words.
The libraries of Magus Veritarnus were filled with ancient tomes that detailed the feeding habits of nymphs. It was a vital subject. Some nymphs developed vast powers. Most did not. So scribes had recorded the feeding habits of past nymphs, trying to unravel the secrets as to which would succeed.
Anduval had studied the texts tirelessly, and had gone much further—charting Seramasia’s growth against that of other maidens, studying texts that plumbed the secrets of various fungi—the content of their vitamins, minerals, phytogens, and hormones.
A truly great skraal mother had not risen in more than six thousand years. The world needed one; it needed a mother right out of legend.
Anduval suspected—as did the skraals—that there were inadequacies in the nymphs’ diets. Many species of fungi had been lost in the ancient cycor attacks.
Of course, Seramasia knew all of this. So Anduval tried to explain his choices.
“The air is dry this morning,” he said. “I thought you would relish the glass mushroom’s moisture. I know there is some variation, but skraal maidens crave certain foods, according to their age, their closeness to ascension, the heat and humidity. The injury you sustained in the attack, this too amends your needs. As I studied the records, I began to see patterns.”
“All of my other attendants are skraals, and they are supposed to be intellectually superior to humans. Why could they not see these patterns?”
Anduval did not want to admit it, but sometimes he thought he was smarter than most skraals, even though tradition held that it was impossible.
“As I pondered what you might want, I felt the answer in my bones.”
“Then tell me,” she asked, “what I will want to eat tomorrow.”
“Your ascension is almost upon you,” Anduval said. “Your skin is hardening. Tomorrow, or sometime soon, you will begin to crave insects with your fungus. You will need the protein to build your chrysalis. Tomorrow I will bring mallow mold, and I have hired children to collect young damselflies.”
The holy maiden considered his words. “You traveled by foot into the dimmest part of the forest this morning, beneath boa trees so vast that the ground never sees light. Were you not afraid of being eaten by a colossal boar?”
Anduval almost decided to lie, to boast at his courage, but the holy maiden had demanded the truth. “I was.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“I wanted to please you,” Anduval said.
“More than you cared for your own life?” the holy maiden asked.
He was afraid she might laugh at him or mock him.
“Yes.”
“Do you love me?”
At her back, a guard hissed. Cessari was her personal attendant and the most dangerous skraal on Danai. Indeed, he held the title of Consort, and in the fullness of time he would become the holy maiden’s mate.
It was dangerous for Anduval to confess his feelings for the maiden. He was only a boy, and he had been told he was not old enough to love. But he knew what he felt.
“I do love you,” Anduval answered, afraid that the consort might crush him for his boldness. “I have loved you from the first time that I saw you at a distance, two years ago.”
The holy maiden peered into his eyes and smiled in satisfaction. “I know what you want from me,” she said. “You hope that in time I will learn to love you, too.”
Among the skraals, she was but a child, like him.
He did not have to confess his feelings. She could divine them.
“You understand,” Seramasia said, “that human emotions are but a shadow compared to what I feel. If I were to love you, you would never understand the depth of my passion. If I were to love you, our minds would meld into one, and my love would destroy your ability to reason. There is a purpose behind the law that keeps you at a distance.”
“I understand,” he said.
She grew thoughtful. “You please me,” she said. “It is my hope that in time you will find a human woman to love. I will go into transcendence soon, and when I do, I will be gone for a number of years. Seek for a human woman to love.
“I fear the cycor will return soon. I do not know if we have four years or four hundred, but we must prepare to defend ourselves. Yet I fear that our preparations will be in vain.
“Therefore, we make the best of the time we have left.
“As for now, your devotion must be rewarded. You will continue to bring my morning meals until I go dormant, but in the afternoon you will begin an apprenticeship under the magus. You, too, shall become a magus.”
Anduval considered. There were technologies that were undreamt of by men, and it was the duty of a magus to master them. It would greatly add to his duties. But he was only a human and did not have the strength or endurance of a skraal. He did not know how he might manage it.
More importantly, he would arouse the jealousy of the maiden’s skraal servants, and that was a dangerous thing to do.
Suddenly Anduval recalled something, a message that he had hoped to deliver to the magus, a message for the holy maiden. Compared to the dangers posed by the cycor, it seemed rather inconsequential.
“Milady,” Anduval said with a bow. “I have heard a rumor that might interest you: in the bogs outside the forest, the skull and body of a dragon have been found.”
The holy maiden drew a breath in surprise, and her guards leaped forward eagerly.
“Is the skull intact? Has it been opened?”
Anduval shrugged. “As far as I know, it has not been taken from the bog.”
“We must go look upon it,” she said, glancing toward Cessari. “This is a great treasure.”
“Beware, milady,” Cessari said. “This may be a trap to lure you from the safety of the forest!”
But the holy maiden whirled and peered to the east, as if her mind sought out beyond the miles. “No, I can feel it now. There, at the limit of my powers. How sweetly the dragon dreams . . .”