by Logan Jacobs
“I should’ve known all of that, and I would’ve figured it out easily, if only I just thought straight for one second,” Florenia cried out. “But all I could think about was how you must be suffering, and how you would be so cold and lonely and sad that none of us came to rescue you, and then hours later, when Lizzy still hadn’t returned with Elodette-- after she went off with her to search another part of the woods, she said-- I kept on searching, but I thought all hope was lost by then, and I knew the only thing left for me to do would be fling myself in the pit too.”
At this point I was really regretting giving Lizzy free creative license with this one. I should have spent the extra minute to come up with a more benign cover story myself, but I hadn’t known how bad Lizzy’s choice would be. “Florenia, listen,” I said as I stroked her wavy chestnut hair back from her usually perfect, but currently puffy face. “Even if I really do die somehow, you can’t do that! You have to carry on and find another way to be happy. Another man, even, I mean you could have absolutely any man in the--”
“I don’t want a man, I want a god,” she wailed. Across the room, I saw Lizzy place her huge paws over her pointed ears.
That was when Elodette burst in. The mighty huntress had a stag slung over her shoulders this time. She took one look at the two tearful women suffocating both of me with their embraces and snorted with impatience. “You are both unbelievably silly,” she informed them. “I knew right away that Lizzy was lying. It would take a hell of a lot more than a couple of stupid pit traps to kill Vander. But you two both lost your minds immediately. I’m glad I am not foolish enough to become besotted with a human. Any human, I don’t care how much better than his kind he is. He’s still just a human!”
“Qaar’endoth is not a human,” Florenia said furiously. “How dare you-- ”
Wolf-Lizzy smashed both of me and both women, never mind that Ilandere was built like a horse, easily out of the way all at the same time as she barreled over to Elodette.
Elodette sighed and held out the stag to her. Instead of immediately ripping off a leg like she had done with the doe, Lizzy reared up and licked Elodette’s face in gratitude. Then she proceeded to rip off a leg and start devouring it so eagerly that she did not even notice the brunette’s utterly horrified expression.
Elodette and I brought her kill back outside, and I helped her skin it like last time while my other self built a small fire nearby so that we could roast the meat. My perpetually ravenous she-wolf hovered around the stag so she could eagerly scarf up any parts we discarded. I didn’t even stop her from consuming the intestines this time, since she had already eaten diseased undead human flesh, so I had no intention of kissing her tonight.
Meanwhile Willobee gathered Ilandere and Florenia around the warmth of the fire and regaled them with a somewhat embellished version of our ghast-fighting exploits that night, in which Ed and Elodette’s roles were minimized, and his own role was significantly magnified. He gave me exactly my fair due in the story, though, either because he knew I was listening or out of his peculiar sense of gnomish loyalty to me.
By the time Willobee had finished describing to them how he had produced a geyser of blue slime that swept away the last few ghasts right before they bit every single other member of the team, which then splashed down into the form of an acid lake that engulfed all the corpses and melted half the forest, several steaks had been cooked and the conversation quickly died out.
Once she had already eaten half the stag herself, I sent Lizzy off through the village to scavenge some hay for the ponies, with a reminder to sniff it and make sure it was free of any dangerous germs. I also went off myself to retrieve a currently unused water trough for them that I remembered passing earlier. With all the villagers who had died or left, there were a lot of spare materials like that lying around, since their hay-eating and trough-drinking animals had either died too or been quickly adopted by their surviving neighbors.
After we retreated back into the shelter of the temple and all bedded down for the night, Florenia murmured in my ear, “Qaar’endoth, I have an idea.”
“What’s your idea?” I asked her. My shaft, which was pressing into her back, clearly had an idea of its own, and I hoped hers was the same one.
“Since you have vanquished Hakmut, you should claim the altar of this temple and create another self,” she answered. “Then perhaps I would not need to worry about you as much. Also, perhaps sometime two of you would be available to penetrate me at the same time.”
I tried to ignore her last comment since it distracted from her first comment, which was a lot more relevant to my quest. “I guess I could try claiming the temple,” I said hesitantly. “I don’t know if it will work though.”
“Why wouldn’t it, my love?” Florenia insisted. “You are a god.”
Chapter Fifteen
I considered Florenia’s words. I still didn’t know whether I was really and truly the earth-walking embodiment of Qaar’endoth, or if I was merely his last surviving servant, but I had to admit that the excruciatingly beautiful woman’s faith in me as a god felt good. It made me tempted to believe it myself. And it gave me a pretty fucking high standard to live up to.
Her proposal about claiming Hakmut’s temple, though, felt less satisfying.
“Yes… I guess I might be… but, I never exactly killed Hakmut,” I pointed out. “Just his priest.”
A few thoughtful hums rose from the throats of our companions nearby, who were clearly eavesdropping on the conversation even though it was too dark for anyone to see each other.
I knew that none of us took Hakmut very seriously, based on the ridiculous posturing and destructive plague-spreading behavior of his representative, Father Norrell-- and it was possible that the priest was a complete and utter fraud and his god didn’t even exist at all. In which case, claiming his altar wouldn’t mean a single damn thing. But it was also possible that some kind of perverse plague-loving god really was lurking around somewhere. Who got off on buboes and pustules and gruesome suffering. Or who had been profoundly wronged by the people of Ferndale in some way I couldn’t comprehend. In which case, so long as he survived, I hadn’t earned the right to claim his altar yet, regardless of the fact that I’d already taken charge of his followers and turned his temple into my bedroom.
Florenia sighed. “Well, I guess you should add that to your to-do list,” she mumbled drowsily. Then I felt her fall asleep in my arms. I guess she was exhausted from frantically combing the wrong part of the woods for me for hours. I felt guilty about that, even though Lizzy was the one who had invented that tale about the pit traps. I cradled the golden-skinned beauty and listened to her sigh contentedly in her sleep.
After returning with the water trough and delivering it to the ponies in their corner of the temple, my other self stood watch at the temple door until Lizzy returned safely with the hay for the ponies.
In the morning, I led my motley team, except for Damask and Diamond who remained behind snoozing in the temple, over to Ed and Maire’s hut.
I wasn’t even fast enough to follow up my first knock on the door with a second before it swung open.
Ed grinned at me broadly and said, “Welcome, Vander or Qaar’endoth, whichever you are. Come on in, everyone.”
“Er, some of my friends can’t fit,” I explained. I gestured behind me at the two centaurs, the strong black and the delicate silver.
Ed had already seen and fought beside Elodette last night, but at the sight of the princess, his brown eyes widened in his scarred and sunburned face.
“Well, I know of a charming duck pond nearby where we can all sit,” he suggested.
“Thank you, that’s very kind of you,” Ilandere said in her bell-like voice.
Ed bowed clumsily to her. There was something about Ilandere’s ethereal style of beauty that tended to make people shy and humble around her, even without having any idea that her herd considered her a princess. Even Florenia’s appearance did not have the sa
me effect, although she was certainly no less exquisitely beautiful. Perhaps it was because her air of superior wisdom and ferocious sensuality might have been intimidating as fuck, but it was still humanly relatable, whereas Ilandere sparkled with an air of purity and magic that made you feel ashamed of every ignoble impulse you’d ever had. You could be a saint, but her presence would still make you want to be better.
The two villagers emerged from their hut wearing matching brown cloaks and started leading my group to the duck pond. Ed was clearly awed by Ilandere, not in a lustful way that would make Maire jealous, but in the way that one might be awed by a shower of shooting stars. Besides the centaur princess, I was the one he was most eager to talk to.
As for Maire, her eyes lit up when she spotted Lizzy in her leather warrior gear. “What you did last night was amazing,” the redhead exclaimed. “I wish I could fight like you. Is there any way you could teach me how to be a wolf?”
Lizzy laughed, clearly pleased by the villager’s admiration. “Afraid not, unless I could go back in time and convince your great-grandsire of the merits of fucking a giant wolf like mine did,” she replied.
“Really?” Maire exclaimed without any trace of Elodette’s disgust when she had heard the same story. “Wow, I can’t believe he did that and survived!”
I glanced over at Willobee and noticed that he looked faintly grumpy. I guessed that was because normally in a situation like this, when we were meeting new people, the gnome would be the first to bend over backward in attempts to dazzle them with his charms, but he had already gotten off on the wrong foot with this pair by burying the bodies they’d intended to burn and nearly causing their entire village to get eaten by their dead neighbors. That was a pretty rough one to talk your way out of.
Just as our group reached the duck pond, which was very pretty and peaceful although currently it was covered in a thin layer of ice, another villager was also approaching it from a different direction. It was a stout, long-nosed woman carrying a large burlap sack, and the sack was wriggling frantically.
“Good morning, Polly,” Maire said politely to the woman.
The woman looked at the scarred redhead suspiciously, and then she gaped at me and my friends. “All you freaks just stay away from me,” she hissed, and I realized she was missing teeth. “I got enough to be worrying about without you two pox-cursed ones trying to burn up Hakmut’s faithful, that’s an offense to Hakmut that is, and… and… this group of mongrels. Strangers got no place here. Can’t see why they’d want to come right now anyway.”
“What’s in the sack?” I asked her.
“Kittens,” she spat in the same tone as if she were saying “vermin.” “Took me all the mornin’ to get ‘em devils rounded up, the mum was hiding them.”
Ilandere gasped in horror. “You-- you can’t possibly intend to drown them! Please tell me that isn’t what you’re doing.”
Polly stared down her long, beaky nose at the centaur with annoyance. “They’s my kittens, not yours, you prissy little thing. Just fancy if I was slaughtering a horse in front of you, what then!” she guffawed.
Ilandere clung to my arm. “Vander, please stop her!” she cried.
“I will stop her if you like, Princess,” Elodette offered coolly as she aimed one of her arrows at Polly’s forehead.
“That’s murder!” Polly squawked in abject terror. “You c-can’t--”
“Murder?” Ed repeated as he scowled at his unpleasant neighbor. “Well, the reeve died three days ago, no replacement yet, and the executioner too. So who’s it up to now to say what’s murder and what’s not, and enforce a law against it? I don’t know, and I may just be a ‘pox-cursed’ bastard, but I have some opinions on the subject, and I don’t think you’d like my opinions much, Polly.”
“Ed, what’s the world come to?” Polly wailed as she fell on her knees and dropped the sack of kittens. They scampered out of the bag. There were seven of them and they were all fluffy orange balls of fur. Ilandere squealed in delight.
“Princess, should I put this creature out of her misery?” Elodette asked.
I sighed. I couldn’t say that I felt much affection for Polly, but she hadn’t done anything or even tried to do anything that lots of villagers everywhere didn’t probably do on a regular basis when they couldn’t control their cats in heat. And besides, Meline the oracle had told me to save the people of Ferndale, not to let a centaur shoot them, even the nasty ones. “Spare her, Elodette.”
Elodette ignored me and continued waiting for Ilandere’s decision.
Ilandere said reluctantly, “All right, you may spare her this time. But if she ever tries to harm another innocent creature, shoot her immediately.”
“Happily, Princess,” Elodette replied.
Polly ran off back toward the village as fast as her stout legs could carry her, which wasn’t fast at all.
“What lovely neighbors you have,” Lizzy remarked sarcastically to Maire. “I mean, I likes to chase a cat sometimes if it’s fast enough to put up a good game of it. I’ll admit I’ve ate one or two when times were hard. But I ain’t never touched the wee ones and I wouldn’t drown any furred creature for no reason at all.”
“Is that a… regular practice here?” I asked Ed and Maire.
Ed sighed. “Do you mean drowning cats? Or do you mean hating and distrusting anyone who’s different? Or do you mean melting into a terrified blob at the prospect of death? Because the answer is yes to all of the above.”
“Why would people ever do such a thing?” Ilandere cried. I was pretty sure she was referring to the cat-drowning part, since she was cuddling one of the orange kittens to her pink-clad chest.
“You can’t keep it, Princess,” Elodette warned her.
Florenia had also knelt to play with a kitten. Lizzy, meanwhile, was staring rather hungrily at another of the kittens in a way that made me nervous for the state of future relations between her and Ilandere.
“Well, sometimes a cat has a litter, and that’s too many mouths for the owner to feed,” Ed explained uncomfortably to the centaur princess. I could tell he was terrified of offending her or being lumped into the same category as Polly, whom Ilandere clearly considered a monster. “And, ah, strays aren’t really trusted around here, since they’re always trying to steal food, and some people think they spread disease, and on top of that, ah, they’re the animal of Hakmut’s goddess sister, who is something of a rival to him, they don’t get on real well if you believe in all that sort of thing. But, some people keep a household cat in spite of all that, for their vermin-hunting usefulness you see.”
“I suppose you mean mice and rats?” I asked. “Wouldn’t they spread just as much disease as the cats, if not more?”
“I don’t know, that may be, but Hakmut’s got nothing against mice and rats particularly,” Ed explained. “Father Norrell never really talks about them at all. Only about cats and how they represented… feminine treachery and conniving, or something like that. I dunno, you’d have to take it up with him.”
“Kinda hard to do that now,” Lizzy snickered.
“Oh, shit,” I said as I remembered that we still hadn’t dealt with the priest’s burned corpse. He hadn’t died of the plague, so I’d been a lot more worried about the corpses that might get back up again. But I didn’t remember having seen his in the path where I’d left it when Willobee and I were gathering up the beheaded ghasts to bring to the pit. Actually, I couldn’t even remember seeing it earlier than that when Lizzy and both of my selves were touring the village during the day to get a sense of Ferndale’s situation. “… Lizzy?” I asked suspiciously. “You didn’t… er… you remember Father Norrell, right, and how important he was to all those people? Any idea what happened to his body?”
“None at all, Vander,” she retorted indignantly. “I was with you the whole day! Remember? And he was all charred up so there wouldn’ta been no flavor at all. So it must have been those batshit crazy followers of his that took it and probably
buried it with creepy rites or something.”
“How did he die exactly?” Maire asked.
I didn’t regret killing the priest one bit, but I was also a little afraid of losing our only allies in the village if they perceived me as a murderer. “I, uh, I’m afraid his constitution didn’t really, ah, seem compatible with touching the hilt of my--” I stammered.
“Oh, thank goodness,” the redhead exclaimed. “Thank you, I mean. You’ve already helped Ferndale more than you could know.”
I grinned and told her, “You’re welcome. Anytime at all.”
“Now let’s get down to business and figure out how to save what’s left of Ferndale,” I said from my other mouth. “We’ll keep doing whatever you two have been doing that’s been working. And we might have a few new tricks up our sleeves too.”
“Sounds good… Vander,” Maire replied as she squinted closely at me. She pointed at my other self. “And… Qaar’endoth?”
“That’s right,” I said, and her scarred face lit up with triumph.
“How the fuck do you do that, woman?” Ed grumbled.
“I guess I must just be more perceptive than you, dear,” she replied serenely.
“I know what we need to change first, Vander,” Ilandere spoke up confidently. It was very unlike the shy little centaur to be the first one to voice an opinion in a group setting like this. I felt proud of her.
“Yes, Princess?” I asked.
She blushed a little at my use of her title. “We need to stop them from killing cats. And any other animals. Except hunting for food. No one can be allowed to drown any more kittens.”
I hesitated. I didn’t like the idea of drowning innocent animals, but… what if the cats really were carrying the plague? I looked at the fluffy orange furballs capering around my female friends and snuggling up against them. They looked perfectly healthy. Not the least trace of a single pustule, and they were bursting with energy, and I knew from talking to the villagers yesterday that one of the first symptoms of the plague was just plain and simple exhaustion. Then I looked up at the huge doe eyes of the silvery princess, which were brimming with impassioned tears. Her rosebud lips quivered as she anxiously awaited my response.