The gomlen burned hotter. Only half an hour ago Austin would have called the plan that rushed to mind ludicrous, but there was no denying the reality of the monster in front of him. It needed to work close up, the old man had claimed. Austin clutched the gomlen tighter, too braced for the creature’s next attack to say a word.
It sprang.
Austin screamed, shielded his head with his half-tangled arm, and swung the gomlen at the creature with his other. The creature’s bulk crushed him into the ground, but his swing found its mark. Amid the flattening pain of impact, Austin felt the gomlen flare. He let go on instinct. The spider-thing shrieked and rolled off him, flailing its legs. A hole burned white-hot into the fleshy juncture of the thin man’s torso and spider body. The creature clawed at the hole in an effort to extract the sphere that seemed to bore deeper into it with every moment until, at last, it erupted in a jet of flames.
With a final shriek, the creature collapsed.
Austin lay gasping, trying to deal with it all. Rather than consume the body, the flames flickered out as quickly as they had appeared.
No sooner had they gone than the creature’s body shuddered anew. Oh, hell, was it recovering? The body twitched and shriveled. The bloated figure grew thin again and retook the thin man’s original form. The gomlen’s hole remained burned in its side. Once-more human eyes stared inertly into the sky.
The body did not move.
Austin groaned and called for help again on instinct. No one answered. Hell, if anyone did, how would he explain what they would find? Beside him was the half-naked body of a dead man. A monster? Magic? No sane person would believe what happened! They would arrest him on suspicion, lock him up until they decided to at least accept whatever self-defense story he could manage — but how long would that take? And that was if they believed him!
Austin grabbed at the sticky strands still clinging to his ankles in a struggle to free himself. Would the silk’s existence lend enough credence to a tale of what really happened? He doubted it.
It was then that he noticed a hissing from the body. The eyes remained lifeless. The hissing wasn’t coming from the thin man’s mouth; the entire body hissed. His ankles free, Austin scrambled back. The hissing turned to sizzling. The body began to collapse, caving in as if dissolved from the inside or — the thought came unbidden — siphoned away to another place. Before long, all that remained was an indistinct purple and gray residue.
For a long while, Austin could only stare. He couldn’t be sure for how long, only that the sun passed behind a cloud at some point, darkening the area and jarring Austin back to lucidity with thoughts of the tide. It would have nearly flooded the causeway by now.
Austin gathered the remains of his pack and its contents, only then remembering the crystalline object. He scooped it up. A thin frame of what appeared to be gold bound the crystal itself. Sunlight and clouds reflected in the crystal’s facets gave the illusion that a swirling cloud of light was contained within.
Rhi, thought Austin, what is this? What did you live through?
What did you forget?
With no time to examine it further, Austin tucked it into the remains of his daypack and dashed across the worm’s back toward the causeway. He hurried down the slope. Waves were spilling across his path to the mainland. Seawater chilled his calves as he crossed, and the implications of what he had experienced battered against rational belief.
And how had the thin man known his name?
Somewhere over the North Atlantic, the werespider’s death woke Maeron midway through his flight. Dead? How? He had sent the creature to tail Austin Blanchard only, and that one was obedient. Only a handful of circumstances would lead it to break cover and invite a deadly confrontation.
Maeron shuddered in his seat with the taste of the energy that flowed to him: death via magic. The implications were not lost on him.
“Is everything alright, sir? We’ll be landing in London in about an hour.”
He smiled warmly at the flight attendant and took her hand before she could stop him. “Everything is splendid. I’ve just received some very encouraging news.”
SIX
Austin spilled the aspirin into his palm, swallowed it dry, and stepped into the shower. Water sprayed his hair, enveloping his throbbing headache. He closed his eyes to focus on the faint measure of relief it provided. After his hike back up the cliff, the throbbing had crept in while crossing the sheep-dotted grass toward the hotel — a combination, he estimated, of the fight with the thin man and the stress of the experience.
Austin breathed in the steam and tried not to think of it. Shower, clean up, and then . . . what? His mental chalkboard stood blank.
Okay, one thing at a time. Shower first. Relax. While apprehensive about staying so near to where he had witnessed it all, he could not help but be thankful for a break from traveling until the morning. He tried massaging his temples. Why did people do that? It never seemed to help anything.
Try as he might to clear his mind, the image of the thin man’s metamorphosis persisted: skin gone liquid — splitting and bloating like a giant cyst, erupting with corruption. Inhuman. It did happen. He was not crazy. Hadn’t the clerk at the hotel desk asked about his torn daypack? Noted the remnants of the silk that clung to it? It happened!
Failing to relax his racing thoughts, Austin refocused: The crystal. What was it? Had Rhi put it there? Been looking for it? Known about it at all? How could he even begin to find out?
“I miss you, Rhi.”
Water spattered into the shower floor, his only answer — at least at first.
“Is ‘Rhianon’ not her preferred appellation?”
Austin opened his eyes with a start. The glass shower door afforded him a view of the entire bathroom, yet no one was there. Had he really heard the voice?
“She was special to you, I presume.”
He froze, certain now he had not imagined it, his pulse racing at the implication. The voice was not Rhi’s. Male and deep, it seemed to come from within, a whisper echoing in his thoughts, unaltered by the bathroom acoustics or the spattering of the shower.
Water continued to spill over him. “Who’s there?” he tried.
“Ah, then you can indeed hear me. Most curious. Most excellent. Were you acquainted with the werespider you killed, or was that, shall we say, an unfortunate introduction?”
Austin thrust his fingers against his ears and wriggled. Nothing felt lodged inside.
“Who is this?”
“Who is this?”
Fair enough. “I’m Austin.” He swallowed. “Where are you? How are you talking to me?”
“Filled with questions, this one. In that, we are alike. You will have patience, Austin. Do not flood me with questions before they can be answered.”
The thought that he truly was going crazy crept its way up his spine. Feeling it somehow prudent, Austin shut off the water and wrapped himself in a towel. “I’m listening.”
“I daresay you are. Excellent, once more. You may call me Boden. As to your other questions, do you recall the crystal you found today?”
Austin nodded, slowly. “Rather hard not to, yeah. Mostly clear, wrapped in gold?” He had left it on the bed where he tossed the rest of his things upon returning to his room.
“Yes, such a wretched use for gold. I am within that.”
“Within it.”
“Trapped. Do you always repeat things said to you?”
“About as often as things claiming to be trapped in crystals talk to me, yes.”
“Claiming. You doubt my word?”
Austin finished his haphazard toweling off. “It’s entirely possible I’m just delusional from stress. Though I don’t guess it’d do much good to accept that explanation.”
“Ah, so it is your senses that you doubt.”
“I trust my senses quite a lot, actually,” he found himself arguing, “but this is a bit unusual, you have to agree. Or would be, on any other day.”
“Disputable, but I shall forgive it for now.” Boden’s friendly condescension was, at least, an improvement over the thin man’s veiled menace.
“Okay, just give me a moment here, okay?” He swallowed again and took a breath. “Let’s assume I’m not going mad — which I realize is still just an assumption, despite what happened earlier — except maybe that was real, but it stressed me so much that this is hallucination . . .”
“You are not insane, though I daresay you shall soon be if you insist on talking circles around yourself. What is more, you will likely take my sanity with you. Cease, now.”
Austin frowned. “Sorry.”
“Accepted. I wish to aid you, Austin, and in so doing, we shall aid each other. How did you come to find me?”
“Well, now, wait a second.” He tugged his clothes on, taking refuge in the normalcy of dressing. The gold-latticed crystal lay on the bed as he remembered. “I want to know more of what’s going on before I start answering questions. What are you? And how in the world did you get in a crystal of all things?”
He stopped short of asking about Rhi. One thing at a time.
Wait, could this Boden sense his thoughts as well as speak in them? He should have thought of it sooner, but it was a novel thing to need to ponder at all. He didn’t yet know how he might find out, either.
Boden took so long to answer that Austin couldn’t help but wonder if he had imagined the voice after all. When he finally did speak, Austin couldn’t decide if he was disappointed or glad for it.
“If you must know,” Boden said, “I am, now, a spirit of wisdom, for my spirit is all that is left to me. Terrible forces stripped me from my body, enslaving me here in formless impotence, that I might be used to further their own selfish goals.”
“Who? How?”
“I care not to share the specifics of the arcanology until I know more of you, Austin. Some knowledge must be earned. So lies wisdom.”
“Arcanology. You mean magic. Real magic?”
“You scoff? A werespider attacked you. You used a gomlen. I may accept the possibility you cannot control magic, yet surely you cannot be so obtuse as to deny its existence?”
“Fair enough, but you can’t blame me for being skeptical.”
“Indeed I can. Skepticism is no excuse for ignorance — and yet, ignorance is nothing you need be ashamed of, if you are willing to be rid of it.”
Austin peered sideways into a wall mirror but failed to get a good look inside his ears. He glanced about for something handheld and reflective enough to get a better angle. Nothing looked suitable.
“That’s why I ask questions, isn’t it? When you haven’t encountered something before, and the prevailing rational thought says it doesn’t exist, finding evidence to the contrary takes getting used to.”
“A luxury you do not have. Plainly, you were unaware of the werespider’s existence. Were you looking for the crystal?”
“Not exactly. I was just exploring and caught a glimpse. That thing was following me long before I got there, though. You knew Rhi?” He added, unable to resist any longer.
“I knew her as Rhianon. It was she, I believe, who hid me.”
“You believe?”
A pause. “My imprisonment presents challenges, in both perception and memory. Even this level of interaction takes extreme concentration. You must be patient.”
“Why? And when?”
“Quite obviously, she sought to free me. There were those who opposed this, of course. She secreted me where you found me, intending to lure them away, and then return. How is it you know her and yet did not know what you would find?”
“When was this?”
“You ignore my questions.”
“Rhi lost her memory before I met her,” Austin admitted. “She didn’t remember any of this, but she had a pendant. It looked almost exactly like an outline I found in a cave just below where I found you.”
“Rhianon herself is . . . gone, then?”
“She died. In a car accident. About a year ago.” Austin swallowed. “So you can see why I’d be curious to know when all these things she forgot really happened.”
“Interesting. She retained no memory of me at all?”
“Not that she mentioned to me. But she returned to Worm’s Head regularly since I knew her. We met two and a half years ago, about.” This last Austin offered belatedly, saying it aloud to help his own deductions.
“Curious. I have had no contact with her since she placed me where you found me. I cannot yet remember when that was.”
“Well, where did she find you? Where was she from? Was that spider-thing — ”
“Werespider.”
“Was he the one after her? And you?”
“It was a servant only, I suspect. What you must worry about now, above and beyond your desire to hear of Rhianon, is who sent it, and what will come after you next. And before you claim I am the target, consider this: you knew Rhianon. The werespider followed you before you arrived here. Its interest was with you, ergo its master’s interest lies with you.”
“The person who imprisoned you.”
“Quite likely.”
“Who is he? They? Why would they erase Rhi’s memory?”
“He or they, I cannot yet recall. Perhaps this is not coincidence, though as said, I believe my own memory issues are linked to the nature of my imprisonment. Already I can feel a strengthening of my faculties since being jarred awake in your struggle. It is possible I shall remember more clearly with time. Answers to your other questions must wait. For the moment, we must keep you safe. You must leave this place.”
“I don’t think the bus runs here after five. It’s pretty far out.”
“Walk, then.”
“Walk where? It’s open farmland! I don’t know anywhere nearby that’s not out in the middle of nowhere.”
He studied the meticulous time grid of his itinerary, absentmindedly trying to smooth the creases in the paper. “I’m leaving in the morning anyway. Nine twenty. I’m safer here tonight than wandering exposed on the road.”
“But they know you are here!”
“If they knew I was going to be here, that guy wouldn’t have had to follow me from Swansea.”
“Can you be certain?”
Austin sat on the edge of the bed, clutching at his itinerary. “All I know is I’m tired, I’m confused, and an actual monster tried to kill me today. I need to rest and just — get a hold on things!”
Boden didn’t answer.
“Look, I know you’re trying to help, I just — don’t push me, that’s all. Boden?”
The crystal lay on the bedspread, light still glinting deep within its translucent facets. Austin picked it up to study and saw nothing deeper. Communicating took effort, Boden had said, perhaps taxing him to his limit. How long before he could speak again?
Austin turned the crystal over in his hands. The gold lattice held it perfectly. Here was a piece of Rhi’s past, perhaps even a key to it, if he could help Boden to remember. Rhi’s lost memories. Her lost life.
He had so many questions to ask.
“If you can hear me, tomorrow I’ll leave as soon as I can.”
Austin tossed and turned for much of the night. The quiet of the hotel’s isolation magnified every unexplained sound, every creak of the wood settling, every gust of wind outside. With the curtains drawn, he passed hours staring at the ceiling in the dim light of the crystal’s glow. Sleep, when it did come, brought fitful dreams of dark places where spiders of all sizes hunted him. Rhi called out for help from every corner, trapped and in pain, somewhere beyond his reach.
He woke with a start at three in the morning, certain he had heard a noise outside that was more than the wind. After a few fruitless moments spent frozen and listening for more, he crept out of bed and drew back the curtain to scrutinize the blackness. He found nothing there. Waves rolled on the shore below, barely visible in the dim moonlight. Briefly, he thought he spotted a shape surface near the beach only
to vanish again a moment later. Austin resisted the temptation to disregard it as imagination. He watched through the gap in the curtains for another glimpse before giving up five minutes later and returning to bed, still unsure.
There were six more hours until he planned to leave. Maybe he shouldn’t have stayed even this long. Should he have hiked, even hitchhiked, as far as he could from here already? He would have been more exposed, yes. It also would have made him harder to find.
Austin knew himself well enough to know he was more comfortable when in control, and he dug in his heels when pushed. Trapped in the darkness until morning, Boden’s advice, so swiftly rejected, now felt like wisdom. He cursed himself for letting his need for comfort lead him to foolishness.
A simple vacation pilgrimage had nearly gotten him killed. There was more to it, to Rhi’s past, to everything that was happening to him. That much was plain. The thin man’s transformation tore through his thoughts again, close and terrifying. He had found a possible treasure trove of secrets about Rhi, if he could only dig a little further. Yet what else was out there, coming for him?
What was he getting himself into?
“Boden?”
The spirit gave no response. The crystal’s faint glow continued to paint the room.
With another cautious glance at the drawn curtains, Austin threw a shirt over the crystal, and tried to sleep.
SEVEN
Sleep came finally. Morning too closely followed. Though Austin kept the crystal near at all times — on the sink while showering, at his side in his bag during breakfast — Boden remained silent. None of the other guests paid Austin any heed in the hotel dining room. No one stared with the thin man’s focus from the day before. Austin checked out as early as he could, then spent the half hour before the first bus leaning against a wooden fence along the path to the worm. There, he watched the waves, imagining Rhi once doing the same. Though anxious for safety, and having found far more than expected, he wished he could stay longer.
Austin boarded the bus alongside an elderly woman who chatted with the driver like a regular. He chose a seat near the back. Already he had begun to feel better about his decision to stay until morning. What else could he do beyond head on to his next destination, especially in the wake of Boden’s continued silence? How long before he could communicate again? He made a note on the mental chalkboard of the time he estimated Boden had started speaking, and when he had stopped. Maybe, if Boden spoke again, he could suss out some equation governing the timing.
Memory of Dragons Page 6