Chris Willrich

by [ss] Eyetooth (html)

  Gaunt and Bone shared a look.

  “I am astonished to say, I believe you mean it,” Gaunt said, slowly passing over Eyetooth. “If—and this is a very large ‘if’—we are hesitating... will a meeting of our minds suffice?”

  “Yes,” Eshe said, raising the key. “For that meeting of minds is why you’re in this together to begin with.”

  They looked at each other, a little shyly, as though having an audience was somehow unseemly.

  “Hold hands,” Eshe commanded.

  They did this.

  “Repeat after me,” Eshe said.

  “You are serious?” Bone said.

  “What is this, Eshe?” Gaunt said.

  “Do you want to return home or not?”

  They nodded.

  “Repeat after me. ‘I promise that all of me, good and bad, will come home to you.’”

  They raised eyebrows at each other. But they said it.

  “‘I promise that my past selves, in all their embarrassing fullness and failure, will become known to you.’”

  There was a longer pause, but they said this too.

  “‘I promise that the future me, whoever he or she may be, will do the very best to honor the future you.’”

  They were staring at each other as they said this. They clasped hands.

  “Shoulder your pain,” Bone murmured.

  “If you could be your best self,” Gaunt whispered, “what would you be?”

  They all toppled onto the observatory floor. Two delven, standing over them, studied them with the detachment of butterfly collectors regarding moths.

  “Very well,” said Sunspool, and from one of the niches of the telescope she raised a box, and the box was of glass and soldered onto it was a cheap treasury of tiny charms. Bone saw twin scythes, a trireme, a rose, a teardrop-shaped glass bead, the tooth of some great beast, a ruby ring, a caravel, a green dagger, a black pyramid, a candle, a scroll, a map, and a sea-chart, a tulip, a spider’s web, a black cat, a tiny picture frame, a silver moon, a key. There were many more charms, and even Bone with his eye for portable treasure could not discern them all.

  Without another word Sunspool opened the box. A great wind rose up, and Bone suddenly felt as if the substance of his life was being unwound onto a great loom. He shuddered, and swirls of purple confounded his sight.

  The box snapped shut with a low boom that was not so much heard as felt in the bones.

  “You have paid fairly, Thief with One Life,” said Sunspool.

  “I retain the last part of the bargain,” said Bone, to Gaunt’s wondering look, “for future dangers.” Sunspool nodded.

  “It is too much, Sunspool,” Moonwax said, offering an arm each to Gaunt and Bone. “I did not perceive what you were taking along with the wind of life.”

  “What have you done?” Gaunt said, rising.

  “Half his remaining life is now ours,” Sunspool said simply.

  Moonwax glared but said no more.

  “What use could you have for it?” Gaunt demanded.

  “The future,” was all Sunspool said.

  “Gaunt...” Bone said. “Persimmon. It is worth it, to be home, safe.”

  “Home?” she said running her hand over his face, where she imagined she found a few more lines. “Safe?”

  “It may be,” he said, “that your touch is home, and safety.”

  “That is a large burden.”

  “I don’t mean it to be. Abandon me tomorrow, or in a year. Or thirty. You are free.”

  “Am I, Bone?”

  Sarcopia Vorre coughed.

  She’d contrived to occupy the spot where Sunspool had stood. It was the place toward which the magical currents of this chamber flowed on their way to Loom Mountain. She gestured like a gracious hostess.

  Sunspool and Moonwax were blasted across the room, the first sprawling onto the great viewing disc, cracking it, the second hitting the telescope which groaned and swung.

  Eshe leaped toward Sarcopia and was caught mid-motion and dashed against a bookshelf. Knowledge and tea thundered down onto her.

  Sarcopia smiled. “Power!” croaked her raven, and it winged excitedly around the room. But as it reached a point opposite Sarcopia, the little mansion charm around its neck began to quiver.

  Somewhere, billiard balls clicked.

  “She is mad, Lord Raz.”

  “She is indeed in a temper, Lady Cynthia.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “And you know what I mean. This may not be the moment to challenge her, mad or mad.”

  “It may be madness not to. She may claim Eyetooth.”

  “We are neither of us strangers to nursemaiding people of minimal scruples and maximal power. We serve an archmage.”

  “But not a god. That is what Sarcopia proposes to become.”

  “There are worse gods, Cynthia, surely. Klarga? The Lord of Last Dreams? The Tyrant of Tomorrows?”

  “Yet, Raz, all of those lack the sheer ineffable stubbornness of Sarcopia Vorre.”

  “You may be right. But what action may we take? Her skills exceed ours.”

  “Yes. But these low-Class ruffians will trouble her nonetheless. I confess they inspire me a trifle, this couple insisting they’re not a couple.”

  “Very well. We will ally with misfits.”

  “Appropriate, no?”

  “Speak for yourself, Raz. In my opinion I define high society.”

  “Wasn’t that ‘defy?’”

  “Droll, my dear.”

  “I remain ever your faithful neither-servant-nor-master.”

  “You are always much more than that.”

  Doomed, Gaunt and Bone flung themselves at Sarcopia. She raised a hand each and blasted them against piles of lore and laundry.

  But the mansion charm moved of its own accord, dragging the croaking raven with it, colliding with Sarcopia. There came a dazzle of lightning, and Sarcopia and her familiar vanished. Holding the charm between them were a lean bearded man and a willowy short-haired woman, giving each other the nod of conspirators.

  “Who are you?” Bone groaned, spitting out a sock.

  “Sarcopia’s unseen, much-abused assistants, I would think,” Gaunt said, carefully setting down a flurry of papers.

  “We have traded places,” said the woman.

  “But she will break free soon,” said the man.

  “Moonwax,” Sunspool said, rising unsteadily, “Act quickly.”

  “If you will indulge me,” Moonwax said to the newcomers, lurching to his feet. As the tiny mansion charm trembled and smoked, Moonwax grasped a crystal container that glowed faintly of moonlight, removed a bronze lid, and tipped it toward the charm.

  Again there was a roaring of wind, but in this case the mansion-charm flew forward and clinked against the bottom of the container, which Moonwax capped. A tiny Sarcopia and an infinitesimal raven emerged inside it.

  Sarcopia shook her fists and blasted terrifying energies harmlessly against crystal glowing with moonlight. A dim, high-pitched, imperious voice vibrated through the jar. “I promise you that one day I will drag your precious moon from the sky!”

  “Doom!” peeped the raven.

  “No doubt,” said Moonwax. “But not today.” He handed Eshe the flask.

  Eshe smiled. “It pleases me to bring Sarcopia to trial.”

  “You lack the art to kill me!” squeaked the sorceress.

  “There is still value in public humiliation.”

  “I will make sure the world knows the strange circumstances of this event! Others will come for Eyetooth!”

  “No,” said Moonwax.

  “It is distasteful to modify memories,” said Sunspool, “but you leave us no choice. And Bone deserves to live without knowing he chose his accelerated demise.”

  There came a tumult of voices. “What?” “You can’t.” “You wouldn’t dare.” “That is not—”

  There was a bright light.

  When Gaunt and Bone recovered, they we
re alone with the delven.

  “What?” Bone said.

  “Something has happened,” Gaunt said.

  They retrieved lost daggers and assumed fighting stances.

  “Peace,” Moonwax said. “Time, for you, has been distorted.”

  “I remember a battle on a mountaintop,” Gaunt mused.

  “And bringing Eyetooth to you,” Bone murmured.

  “But the details are muddled, dream-like. Who we met. What we did. I feel suddenly tired, famished, bruised.”

  “And I—drained...”

  “A conundrum has been resolved,” Sunspool said. “Bone, you’re free of your oath to the First Wizard.”

  “Eyetooth will be safe in our care,” Moonwax said.

  “Do you not wish a price for this?” Gaunt said, straining to remember something.

  “No. Indeed, it is we who owe you a future boon.”

  Gaunt frowned. “I feel that there’s much you’re not saying.”

  “Yet delven never offer boons willy nilly,” Bone said. “Might we use yours to deal with a certain book we’ve sworn to destroy?” Gaunt nodded agreement.

  “Alas,” Moonwax said, “its power is beyond our arts.”

  “So be it,” Gaunt said. “But I feel that there’s much you can do, and have done. That we’ve lost not just time but experience. I feel we have both friends and enemies out there that we’re unaware of.”

  “That is as may be,” Sunspool said. “But you will not hear more about the matter from Moonwax and me. You have much to learn about yourselves, and each other, before you encounter those others again.”

  “That sounds ominous,” Gaunt said. “Don’t we have sufficient enemies already? I am just a poet.”

  “If you think a poet cannot shape the world,” Moonwax said, “then you indeed have much to learn.”

  “I’ve lived long,” Bone scoffed. “All these journeys are a sort of epilogue for me. How can I grow?”

  “You’ll be surprised,” Sunspool said. “For if it is true that the nature of our observations sharpens certain details out of the fog, and that therefore our thoughts shape the universe, however delicately, then it matters that we love. For little by little, the universe will become a loved and loving place. That is worth suffering for.”

  Bone considered fleeting memories of dreams and said nothing.

  Gaunt took his hand. “Very well, delven. We will save your boon for later. Meanwhile freedom is ours. We have given an Eyetooth for it.”

  Bone roused himself. “Treasure awaits us out there.”

  “And the occasional good deed.”

  “And treasure.”

  Something had changed between them. There was less between, it seemed, and more them. Gaunt led Bone out, contriving to place her hand on his behind while somehow looking entirely wholesome about it all.

  After a long pause Moonwax said, “They are doomed, aren’t they, love?”

  “Yes,” Sunspool said.

  “And we have foreseen for ourselves a happy ending.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have it in that box, having stolen it from them.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why do I feel a touch of envy?”

  Sunspool did not answer. After a long silence she and Moonwax took each others’ hands. They glowed at the interface and looked for all the worlds like children peering into a fire.

  Eshe of Kpalamaa whistled on the bridge, passing by a pair of guards who nodded greetings. She did not recall meeting them before, nor the details of capturing the evil sorcerer. For that matter, she had a vague memory of a pungent encounter with a seagull, yet her hair was impressive as always and felt freshly washed.

  But behind her she heard, “I think I would have remembered such a person, Marit,” and the other said, “I, too, Subrata. But these are strange times. Do you not feel a little more free this day, a little more hopeful?” and “I do. And a little more eager to get home. I do.”

  Eshe paused for a beer where a bespectacled innkeeper brought mugs to an inconspicuous bearded man and a willowy woman deep in conversation. Something involving looms and computation. Something whose time was soon to come.

  And as Eshe left town a bizarre contraption of metal and wood and humanity rushed past. She could not explain any of it, but as she smiled her tongue found a gap in her upper gum, damage from the recent battle perhaps. And perhaps that was all right. Kpalamaa science could replace it, and for a fleeting moment she remembered a time when she was small and losing teeth was a strangely welcome experience.

  She did not always like where adulthood had led her. But she would never go back.

  A quarter mile plus twenty feet, O you trees! came the distant cry of triumph. A quarter mile plus fifty!

  Thanks to Nicholas Ian Hawkins for a character description.

  © Copyright 2020 Chris Willrich